


Dreams Like Water, Like Wind

by xyliane



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Body Horror, Burns and Scarring, Canon-Typical Violence, Dream Magic, F/F, Family, HxHBB18, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, explicit hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-05-28 20:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15056717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xyliane/pseuds/xyliane
Summary: “I don’t dream,” Killua says the first time he falls into Gon's dreams.Gon peers at him through the spell in his hands, solid and warm with the weight of an ocean that only exists in his memories. Doing magic, making potions, crafting runes—you need to dream to do that, to find the memories that bind everything together in a tapestry. Even worldbinding, for all that it draws its powers from physical reality, still needs dreams to make it breathe, to give it life. Maybe it’s a balance, like how worldbinders use their runes to connect the physical world to new magic. To dream, in a way, is to live magic.But here Killua is, in Gon’s dreams, doing magic seemingly without dreams of his own. If Killua has dreams—if he lies, or if he forgets, then he has a reason. But if Gon asks now, he's not going to tell the truth. Whatever it is, he'll tell Gon eventually.So Gon asks, “Don’t you get bored if you don’t dream?”Killua grins, blue eyes sharp with surprise and delight. “I’m not bored now.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2018 Hunter x Hunter Big Bang over on tumblr! A MASSIVE thanks to my beta and to my friend [wuzzy](https://wuzzyletoastermac.tumblr.com/) for dealing with lots and lots and lots of uncertainty, anger, frustration, obsessions with dye, and doubt. This would not have happened without you both.
> 
> Also a HUGE thank you to my artist [toomanyhexcodes](http://toomanyhexcodes.tumblr.com/post/175248698526/happy-hxhbb18-i-was-gifted-with-the-fic-number) over on tumblr, who made some super cool amazing art for this! Go look at it and be in awe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **IX**   
> _Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;  
>  Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?_   
> -The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyum (trans. Edward FitzGerald, 1889)

“I don’t dream,” Killua says the first time he falls into Gon's dreams.

Gon peers at him through the spell in his hands, solid and warm with the weight of an ocean that only exists in his memories. Doing magic, making potions, crafting runes—you need to dream to do that, to find the memories that bind everything together in a tapestry. Even worldbinding, for all that it draws its powers from physical reality, still needs dreams to make it breathe, to give it life. Maybe it’s a balance, like how worldbinders use their runes to connect the physical world to new magic. To dream, in a way, is to live magic.

But here Killua is, in Gon’s dreams, doing magic seemingly without dreams of his own. If Killua has dreams—if he lies, or if he forgets, then he has a reason. But if Gon asks now, he's not going to tell the truth. Whatever it is, he'll tell Gon eventually. 

So Gon asks, “Don’t you get bored if you don’t dream?”

Killua grins, blue eyes sharp with surprise and delight. “I’m not bored now.”

* * *

There’s a knock at the tavern’s door as Gon sits down at his desk, potion bottles ready in front of him and wax warming over the flame. He ignores the sound. It’s still early, and he’d promised Aunt Mito they’d be done by this morning. Well, he’d promised they’d be done last night, but he had to be up early if he wanted to avoid the crowds around the fishmongers _and_ snag a few of the mangoes the South Sea sailors brought in last week. The port had still been crowded, even if Buhara had snuck him a few extra fruit when Menchi wasn’t looking, and it was only years of sprinting from the tavern to port and back that made sure Gon was back in his room before Aunt Mito started the morning chores. Magic is easy by comparison. Gon doesn’t even need to focus too hard, the same dream filtered out of his memories and into the different spells. It’s something nice and quiet, a warm day on the ocean outside of Whale Island, the memory playing vividly across his mind as it drains away, mixing with the air and water until it starts filling the—

The knock at the door sounds less like someone impatiently trying to enter the tavern, and more like several ironworkers hammering at the thick wood with hammers. One of the bottles rattles, and the little dream pooling at its bottom vanishes with a puff of sea salt. He pokes it back into place and refocuses, eyes half-closed. The quicker he can finish, maybe there will still be time to finish the flying fish trick. He has the right dream, it’s more that he can’t figure out if paper or glass will be better to—

“Gon!” Aunt Mito calls up from the kitchen, shattering his concentration. All four of the potions in front of him dissipate, the memory coming back to him in a rush.

He drops his head to his desk, the wood warm from the sun. _“What?”_ he shouts in the direction of the ground floor.

The front door rattles again, threatening to come off its hinges. “Get the door! I need to finish cleaning before Palm gets here!”

Gon considers ignoring her for a long moment and finishing the spells. Or not even bothering with the spells, but dropping back into his dreams, hoping to find something more interesting than making a spell for seasickness. Something that would help him figure out where to go when he leaves Masadora. Maybe a map, or a compass, or a sail that never runs out of wind.

 _“Gon!”_ Aunt Mito bellows.

He doesn’t bother clearing off the worktable (although he does turn off the flame), and darts down the stairs. Aunt Mito’s tavern isn’t huge—it’s too close to port, and the whole building is barely wide enough to accommodate the bar and the tiny cluttered kitchen—but she and Gon have crammed enough sturdy tables and chairs to fit the growing crowds. She’s earned a name for herself over the last seven years, not merely as a tavernkeeper but as a dream seller, offering a variety of potions and trinkets that even worldbinders can’t offer. While Gon might have bigger dreams or greater strengths, Aunt Mito is best at nuance, at making dreams last.

She tells Gon he’ll learn that someday, if he stops dreaming about _maybes_ and _elsewheres,_ because that’s what got his dad killed or worse. Gon just thinks she’s old enough to have learned better. At seventeen, she was still on Whale Island, working for Gran’s bar and taking care of Gon. At seventeen, Gon is in Masadora, far away from Whale Island and wondering where else he can go.

At seventeen, who knows what Ging was doing. Aunt Mito doesn’t tell him, and Gon stopped asking when they left home.

He leaps from the stairs across the tables, bare feet clearing the freshly cleaned from the night before. Pots and dishes clatter from the little kitchen. “You step on the furniture, you clean it again!” Aunt Mito yells.

It’s been ages since he slipped up like that, and both he and his mom know it. But rather than remind her (and probably have to clean the whole front room anyways), he clatters to a stop and opens the door right before the knocking starts again.

Gon grins at the tall woman, her fist halted mid-hammer. Sunlight glitters on the gemstone pressed against her forehead, not blocked by the black veil covering the rest of her head and shoulders. Robes of purple and pale green, stitched with intricate silver scales, cover the simple travel dress and well-worn leather boots any self-respecting merchant owns. She scowls down at Gon for a moment, before giving him a smile that entirely transforms her face. “Hi, Palm!” he says.

She ruffles his hair, her sharp nails prickling his scalp. “You grew again,” she says. “We were only gone for six weeks.”

“I’m seventeen. Aunt Mito thinks I should be done soon.”

“You are becoming quite attractive. Which I suppose makes sense, given your aunt’s looks—”

A burly man in white trousers and a cape closed with showy brass clasps shoves past Palm to scoop Gon up in a bone-breaking hug. “Stop growing so much, brat!” Knuckle says, and Gon laughs.

“Help Shoot, you fool,” Palm snaps.

“He’s got it,” Knuckle says, having to shove Gon down to make him shorter.

“No, I do not,” Shoot says from behind a tall stack of fabric. Some glimmer with embroidered runes, while others are painted with colorful symbols instead. All of them teeter in Shoot’s hand, towering over his head and threatening to tumble down in the morning breeze.

As Gon tries to get out of Knuckle’s grip to help Shoot, he hears a self-satisfied grunt from inside the tavern. “Gon, who was it? I need those—” She pauses at the door, flour and soot all over her red hair and a brilliant smile in her eyes. “Palm. You’re early.”

“Hello, love.” Palm colors a little. “I should have warned you that we had favorable winds, and I didn’t want to wait—”

Aunt Mito leans up and presses a quick kiss to Palm’s lips, and Palm turns even brighter red. Knuckle wags his eyebrows at Shoot, who glowers and makes an obvious _no_ expression. Gon simply grins wider. Aunt Mito’s always happier when Palm is around. She says, “I was just finishing up the food prep. Do you need help?”

Palm visibly looks over Aunt Mito, whose sleeveless dress and trousers are somehow even more covered in flour and grease than her face. “Knuckle and Shoot can take care of it,” she says. “We need to deposit the textiles at the shop as it is. Are the potions ready? Our lone passenger could use the seasickness aid as soon as possible.”

Gon doesn’t quite meet his mom’s eyes, and she scowls. “Gon, you promised.”

“I was busy!”

“Wandering around port looking at maps and bothering ship captains instead of doing what you need to.”

“I’m old enough to ask if they’ll take me on their crew next season,” Gon says, and his mom’s scowl deepens into something dreadful. Maybe he should have waited to talk to her about this until later. “Menchi and Buhara might have space before they go to the South Seas, and there were rumors that someone had seen Ging around the—”

“No,” Aunt Mito snarls, and Gon takes a step back. A vein visibly throbs in her forehead. “The potions, Gon. You had all week to do them.”

“But I—”

Knuckle steps up, one hand stabilizing Shoot’s stack of cloth and the other on Gon’s shoulder. “You and the captain need some catching up,” he says. “Let me and Shoot take the goods back to Knov, and Gon can do the…the magic shit, or whatever it is.”

“I’m making a seasickness antidote,” Gon says quickly.

“Yeah, that. And you two enjoy a nice late breakfast. Or lunch. Whichever it is.”

Aunt Mito is less than pleased at the suggestion, but Palm hesitantly reaches out to hold her hand, and she sighs. “I guess we have a little time before the first drunks show up,” she says. “Gon found some good fish, and the neighbors dropped off some bread.”

Palm lights up at the suggestion of bread and pulls Aunt Mito towards the tavern. “Perhaps I can bake something for you later? We found a shop selling the most wonderful almond cakes in Soufrabi…”

Knuckle gives Gon a conspiratorial grin as the two women step back inside, debating the benefits of different types of flour. “That’ll give you enough time, yeah?”

“At the least, we will finish our first assortment of textiles and find assistance with the rest,” Shoot mutters.

Gon nods. “Thanks, both of you.”

Knuckle helps himself to most of Shoot’s fabrics. “You never know, maybe Palm’ll convince your mom you can come along with us next time,” he says.

“We could use the help,” Shoot adds, glaring at the mess Knuckle is making of the carefully ordered cloths.

Gon can’t help but feel a thrill at the suggestion, but he stamps down the feeling immediately. Aunt Mito would hate that, and Gon isn’t sure he wants to stay with someone he knows, even on his first real voyage. “I’ll think about it,” he says instead.

Knuckle snorts. “Do that. And get some chow for the pups ready when we come to pick up our boss,” he says. “Now, get going!”

Shoot rolls his eyes, but follows his coworker up the cobbled streets, apologizing to someone for Knuckle’s boistrous shouting. Gon makes a quick escape back upstairs, pausing only to snag one of the pieces of bread Aunt Mito had put out and dip it into the curry she’d made. It’s supposed to be for the sailors later, but it’s good enough for now.

And then he’s back in front of his bottles.

The right way to make a potion out of a dream is simple: remember the dream, filter it through water or air—stones and fire work as well, but flame is easy to lose control over, and gemstones are expensive—and encase it in its new home. Remembering the dream, or the memories that make up the dream, is the hardest part, but Gon’s been doing this since he was six, when Aunt Mito made sure he had a way of channeling his energy and imagination into something useful. It’s something anyone can do with enough concentration or focus. Gon’s had a lot of practice, and he has a lot of ideas.

Working dreams is best done awake, when the difference between a dream and reality is still clear. But that way is boring. And it takes longer.

Gon breathes a whiff of the dream spell he’d prepared, just in case, and he nods off within moments, head pillowed on his arms. It’s probably not healthy to keep using spells like this one, but these are potions for Palm. And she can’t keep Aunt Mito distracted all morning.

…well, she can, but the tavern has to open eventually. And Gon needs to be awake when that happens, or he’ll never get to work dreams again.

He opens his eyes to almost the exact same scene as he’d left. The most visible difference is how the sky is full of violently colored flowers instead of birds, the sun itself a brilliant crystal over the colorful buildings of Masadora. Even the ocean stays firmly in its place in port, not bothering to explore up the streets. Which is slightly disappointing, but unsurprising: he did come here to work, after all. It makes sense that the dream is normal and boring. It’s easy to pull the memory he wants out and put it in his hands, the dream allowing him to visualize it when in reality he’d need to filter it first.

The other difference is that Killua climbs in the open window of his workshop, an exasperated expression on his face and his clothes soaked with seawater. The dreamwalker perches on the windowsill, tugging off a polished leather shoe and dumping water onto the floor. A little golden fish falls out, flopping around on the ground for a moment before flying back up and out the window. “Does it always have to be oceans?” he asks.

Gon stops up the last potion as best he can without physically sealing the crystal bottle with the wax warming next to his sleeping body. “I like oceans,” he tells Killua.

“I never would have guessed,” Killua says with as much enthusiasm as a sack of dust. But it makes Gon laugh. Even as uninterested as Killua pretends to sound, he can’t hide the grin in his eyes, all but sparkling even in the sunny brightness of the dream. He always stands out in Gon’s dreams—carefully tailored blue shirt and sleek black trousers deliberately free of the elaborate embroidery and eye-catching colors so many Masadorans wear, or even the greens and oranges and yellows Gon prefers. His pale skin would catch every eye even in port, where it’s possible to see a person in every shade of color, from the tawny bronzes of the Inland Empire to the gold of the South Sea and the nearly sable merchants from the Free Cities, or Gon’s own freckle-splattered brown. Every line on Killua is sharp, deliberate, where Masadora and Gon are attention-grabbing and chaotic. Well, except for his hair, a mess of white curls that looks impossibly soft in a way that makes Gon want to run his fingers through it, even when it’s soaked through with ocean water.

He reaches under the worktable for something that will help Killua, soft green cloth manifesting in his hand. “What are you doing here?” he asks. “I thought you were working in the capital this week.”

“I was.” Killua hastily runs the towel over his hair, sending drops of water at Gon like a dog shaking off a rainshower. “But I found something you might be interested in.”

“More board games?” Gon asks. The backgammon set Killua had brought with him the last time he’d been to the capital of the Inland Empire still sits somewhere in the back of Gon’s dreams, pieces occasionally rattling around and demanding to be played. The officer whose dream that had been hadn’t been particularly subtle.

But Killua shakes his head. “Not this time.”

“Is it an animal? Like a foxbear?”

“Like from Whale Island? Probably not.”

“Flowers?”

Killua’s ears turn a little pink. “Don’t you dream enough of those? Yours are better than mine would be.”

“I don’t always dream about flowers. You liked the ones I gave you last week.” Well, flushed red and all but dropped out of the dream, which is practically Killua-speak for how much he liked them. But Gon can feel his friend glaring at him through the towel, so he doesn’t laugh too hard. “What did you bring me?”

“I didn’t really bring _it_ so much as it brought me.”

That’s cryptic, even for Killua, whose usual answer to “Why don’t you dream?” is “Why do you?” But Gon’s interested—Killua is practically buzzing with excitement, blue eyes dancing and silvery threads glimmering on the back of his gloves. And Killua always finds the most interesting things.

Although… “Where is it?” Gon asks.

Killua fidgets with a loose string on the back of his gloves. It glints in the crystalline sunlight, tangling past Killua’s fingers and out the window. “Like I said, it brought me. I couldn’t bring it here.”

“So we follow the thread?”

“Something like that—Gon, wait for me!”

Gon’s out the window almost before Killua finishes speaking, dropping head over heels to the cobblestone two floors below. Above, Killua yells about cheating dreamers, and Gon takes off laughing, letting his feet and his instincts guide him. It’s _his_ dream, after all—even if Killua brought something into it, Gon knows he’ll be able to find it. He could have simply brought whatever it is to his workshop, erasing the need for a chase or a sprint with the simple effort of will. Part of dream magic is mastering his own dreams, enough to make them malleable and usable outside his own memories. But there’s no challenge in making it easy.

This Masadora looks a lot like the real Masadora: busy streets with faceless people in colorful, strange robes fluttering like butterfly wings around them. Sometimes, the robes turn into wings as Gon rushes by, curling embroidery turning into glittering scales for a moment until they’re out of his attention. The people he knows, whose dreams he’s touched with his spells and potions, their faces swim in and out of focus, turning the crowd into a dizzying array that Gon only barely pays attention to. When he’d first come to Masadora, the rare dreams of the port city had been chaotic and confusing, somehow worse than when he was awake. Everything was too big, or too loud, all of the colors of Whale Island and even more smells condensed into boats and shops and turbans. But it’s been years now, and he dances through the streets of his dreams as easily as he scrambles through the early morning clusters of fishermen, trusting his feet to take him where he needs to go.

And he trusts Killua as much as his feet. With the sound of Killua’s shoes clattering against the brick and his laughter echoing through the cluttered streets, there’s no fun in _not_ making it interesting.

Killua’s string turns down towards the docks themselves, but Gon’s feet skid to a halt in front of an empty storefront outside what should be the fish market, where the streets are still cobbled and the air stinks of fish. In early mornings, when the sky is gray and fishers scramble to avoid the first wave of airships arriving out of the fog, there are usually food vendors with little packages of rice and fish wrapped in worn-out cloth, or fried dough filled with nuts or meat.

But instead of the clashing smells of muck and food and brine, it’s…Gon’s not sure how to describe it other than _familiar._ Dreams are orderly, in their own chaotic way: everything comes from memories, jumbled up and reorganized and turned into something new. That’s what makes dreams so powerful. So when Gon sees the market, or the docks, or the flowers in the sky, it’s because he’s experienced them in some form before.

But the fuzzy hole on the side of the building is like nothing Gon’s ever seen. It ripples where the building’s wall should be, a patchwork of moss and vines and sand that runs together in something that smells like fire. It rubs against Gon’s senses like sandpaper, a harsh cleansing of Masadora’s usual stink and leaving behind only the clear smell of fire and humid ocean air. It shouldn’t be here, and it’s like nothing Gon knows. But as he reaches for it, moss rippling out of the space and eating at the cohesion of his dream like acid, he feels something warm and familiar, almost—

A glove sparking with silver runes snags his wrist and yanks him back. The world snaps back into focus, and the fuzzy emptiness and unfamiliar familiar feeling falls back into the spaces of the building’s wall. All that’s left is the smell, overpowering the port’s grime with clean fiery air.

Killua rolls his eyes at Gon. “Do you always have to make things difficult?”

“Not always,” Gon says, and his friend snorts disbelievingly. “You could always visit me, then you’d know how to get around.”

“You know I can’t,” Killua says, mouth twisted. “I have to work. And I’m not taking one of your dreams to learn about it, either, so don’t bother.”

Gon makes a face, but doesn’t press any further. Instead, he turns back to the hole on the wall. It ripples enticingly, like it notices his attention. “Killua, what is that?”

“I don’t know,” he says, almost in awe despite himself. “It brought me here. One minute I was in some doctor’s dreams looking for a key, and the next, I was here. Well, it dropped me into the ocean. Would’ve been better if it’d dropped me here…”

The familiar warmth echoes out of the hole again, and it seems to grow off the wall, like a three dimensional shadow. A green, mossy, impossible shadow, that reaches towards Gon as he tries to—

This time, Killua distracts him with a firm smack to the back of his head. It doesn’t hurt—this is _Gon’s_ dream, Killua has to follow _his_ rules, and his rules say he shouldn’t get hurt—but the shock still sends him to the cobblestones. “What was that for?” Gon whines. “I’m trying to figure out what it is!”

“By sticking your arm into it?”

“No!” Gon starts to say, but Killua eyes him and the mossy carpet still wafting around his toes. “Maybe a little. It’s a dream.”

Killua crosses his arms over his chest, expression pensive. “I _think_ so. But dreams can’t make you dreamwalk. You have to tie things together deliberately to dreamwalk, to know the right runes and the right memories to pull at in order to go between dreams. And then you have to use the right magic to make it stable, something that uses up the whole dream like any other magic does. It’s why I don’t—” He cuts himself off and turns towards the hole. It ripples defensively, little puffs of salt and smoke wafting out. But it doesn’t erupt like it did when Gon tried to touch it. “I think it’s a dream, but someone tried to dreamwalk without using it up. Which still doesn’t explain why it brought me _here._ ”

Gon lets that sit for a moment, watching the hole fuzz and echo and scratch at his mind, like he can see the sensation. “If it’s a dream, then you can shape it, right? Like a spell.”

“It’s not like extracting part of a memory and destroying it for a spell. It’s…it’s like writing a rune that changes water into a mountain. There’s not enough ambient energy to even _touch_ the thing.” He glares at Gon, who’s already itching to do just that. “Really? Again?”

“If it’s a dream, you don’t need to _use_ it,” Gon says. “We can shape it a little, see what it was originally, or something that can show us what it was.”

Killua’s glare deepens. “You can do that?”

Gon doesn’t know. It’s not exactly something Aunt Mito taught him, how to change dreams that aren’t his or aren’t already in a spell. And he doesn’t really know much about dreamwalking, either—but Killua does. Once this is done, if it works, maybe…

“I won’t know unless I try,” he says brightly, and plunges his arms back into the hole before Killua can protest. The fuzzy sandy feeling ricochets outwards, wrapping around him in vines and scissors and gnawing at the rest of the building. It’s closer to handling a nightmare, or ten nightmares, or a dream about runic algebra, something Gon can’t understand and needs to shove in a jar to keep it away before it wraps him up and never lets him go. But he doesn’t have a jar, or a crystal, or anything a dream would normally be put into.

Dreams are a bunch of memories strung together, weaving things that happened with things that don't make sense to create dreamscapes. While it's the malleability of dreams that make them useful for magic, it’s the strings that give them power. Gon can pull it apart a little to pick at whatever is inside, like a embroidered picture or a woven tapestry. Even this empty hole of disorienting confusion was once something, something with power enough to bring Killua here. If he can find a loose thread, a memory that’s connecting it to Gon’s dream, a familiar feeling of warmth and delight flowing over his hands—

_Oh._

He has to stoop to catch the little fire before it hits the ground. A little blue and orange flame flickers up gently from his palms, dancing like it’s happy to see him. The rest of the port in his dream settles back to where it usually is, if somewhat muted compared to the brightness in his hands. And deep inside the fire, a little boy sprints up a path, something glowing in his hands.

He turns to Killua, expecting his friend to chew him out again. But the dreamwalker is grinning from ear to ear with utter delight. “Frozen hells, Gon, that was amazing.”

“It’s not so different from shaping spells,” he says. The fire tries to lick up his arms, but Gon forces it back with a push of effort. The feeling of familiarity hasn’t lessened. If anything, it grows, pressing at Gon’s memories, almost like… “Killua, I think that’s me.”

Killua peers in close enough that his nose starts to turn an angry pink, and Gon has to be the one to pull back this time. “He has your hair,” the dreamwalker admits. “But why would one of your dreams be a…a hole? And what was it doing on the other side of the Empire?”

“I don’t know,” Gon says. There’s a lot he doesn’t know, but this is…this is interesting, and strange, and new. “Can we go in?”

The grin falls off his face. “Go—you mean dreamwalk?”

“It’s a dream."

“Yes, but.” Killua runs a gloved hand through his hair like he can’t decide if he wants to pull it out or not. “Maybe I can go. But I don’t know what I’ll be looking for. And you can’t dreamwalk.”

“You said dreamwalkers use other people’s dreams, right?” he asks.

Killua opens his mouth to respond, but almost immediately sees Gon’s plan. “No.”

He shrugs. “Why not? They’re my dreams. I won’t use the important ones.” Dreams of fishing, or the ocean. Things he’s done dozens or hundreds of times, sprinkled throughout his imagination. He already uses them in diluted forms for spells and potions. It can’t be that much different to change them into something for himself.

“Gon, those are your memories. It’s not like some potion that’s diluted a little part of a dream. Dreamwalking uses the whole thing. When they’re gone, they’re not coming back.” The dreamwalker starts pacing, hands twitching at his sides. “And do you know how to make runes to guide your movement? To make sure you don’t completely deconstruct the core integrity of the dreamscape? Or get lost?”

“I don’t know what that means, Killua.”

“Exactly! Do you even know what runes you’d want to use?”

Gon doesn’t know almost _any_ runes, not the sort that fly ships or build castles or dreamwalk. But that doesn’t matter. He’s got Killua. “I don’t need that, though. You know how to dreamwalk, and you know how runes work. I know how to shape magic.” He grins, watching Killua’s eyes widen and knowing it’s with the same thrill he feels. “I can come with you, if you take me. Please?”

He can practically feel Killua’s resistance crack. “I can’t promise you’ll be okay. I haven’t done this since…since I don’t know.”

“That’s okay. I trust you.”

The words hit Killua in a blow between the ribs, and Gon knows he’s won. He’s not sure why—Gon _does_ trust Killua, with his life and his memories and everything in between. They haven’t known each other for too long, but it’s always felt right. It shouldn’t make Killua turn that many funny colors.

Killua shakes himself, straightening his cuffs and readjusting his collar. His cheeks stay pink, though. “Can you make a thread out of a dream?”

Thread’s not exactly easy to make—Aunt Mito’s good at it, but Aunt Mito is good at weaving dreams into almost anything. So Gon, careful not to drop the flame in one hand, pictures the same quiet memory he’d been using for the seasickness potions: he’d been ten, and the sky had been as clear as it ever was in Masadora. He’d sailed out past the fishing boats, letting the rune in his sail take him until the city was a glimmering speck on the horizon, and laid down at the bottom of the boat. He can feel his skin sweat and blister from the heat, but the gentle breeze brings ocean spray across his forehead. The image swims across his senses, and he focuses it all into a single line, winding it around his free hand as far as it will go, until—

The memory empties out with a little snap, and Gon is left with a thread of warmth and gold. The silver embroidery on Killua’s gloves sparks a little.

“Great,” Killua says. He loops the thread through the air into a sharp and angular pattern, nothing like the looping runes Gon’s used to seeing around Masadora or on Whale Island. The dreamwalker ties one end into his gloves and the other around Gon’s wrist, and breathes a quiet word that makes the whole thread glow with silvery light.

Gon wonders what dreams are bound up into Killua’s embroidery. How powerful it can be, if he can use it all the time but he doesn’t mind giving up. Maybe Killua will trust him enough to tell him, one day.

“Ready to go?” Killua asks.

“Who’s in my dream if I’m not there? Does it fall apart?”

Killua’s face scrunches up like he’s been offered a pitcher full of beetles. “Or you can stop asking stupid questions and let me concentrate,” he says. “I haven’t done this in awhile.”

“It’s not stupid! I haven’t ever dreamwalked, I want to know—”

“Shut _up,_ Gon.”

“Okay.”

Killua says something in that language Gon doesn't understand, and Masadora vanishes into a storm of fire and starlight.

Almost immediately, they’re deposited on a familiar beach. Or a beach familiar to Gon—he knew it like the bottoms of his feet once, where every pointy rock lay or every good tree trunk for digging out beetles. But this beach has perfectly smooth circular pebbles of every color, and tree trunks that are the wrong color and height. Even the ocean is wrong, placid and immobile where it should be lively and dangerous even on the calmest days. It makes the skin on the back of his neck crawl.

Killua doesn’t seem to notice at all. He stares open-mouthed at the island, craning his neck to look at the trees with their mismatched flowers. These shouldn’t be flowering at all, and _those_ should be bearing fruit, not coconuts. “You recognize this?” he asks.

But Gon nods. “I think it’s Whale Island. Or a dream of it.”

“Makes sense. Still doesn’t tell me why it dumped me with you.” The boy from the flame darts past them, bare feet smacking against the pebbles as he sprints away into the forest and up towards where Gon knows a small house will be at the top of a hill. Before Killua starts running, though, he reaches back and grabs onto Gon’s hand. The fabric of his gloves is soft and warm. “Don’t let go. I don’t know what’ll happen if the thread breaks.”

Gon squeezes back, his palm firm in Killua’s. “I won’t. I think I know where to go.”

He leads Killua up the path, following the light in the boy’s hands sending multicolored shadows ricocheting off of the miscolored trees and the smooth path. He’s far enough ahead that Gon’s not sure if they’ll catch up before he makes it to the house, and when he tries to will the dream to speed them up, it doesn’t do much more than give him a headache. Which makes sense—this isn’t Gon’s dream, he can’t change its rules.

But rather than run up to the house on the hill at the end, the boy veers sharply to the left, back down the hills and towards port. And Gon halts in the path. He doesn’t remember this.

“Hey, starblind,” Killua swears. When Gon doesn’t say anything, he tries again, softer. “Gon?”

There’s an ear-splitting _thud,_ and a pillar of flame blooms out of the trees below them, in the direction the boy had gone. It sends both Gon and Killua stumbling back, only the grip on each other’s hands keeping them upright. But then the world wrenches to one side, and the plume of smoke and the nascent screams stop as though snipped out of existence.

A few moments later, the boy runs by. At this distance, Gon recognizes himself: spiky black hair, wide brown eyes, and a flame of green and pink and blue dancing in his hands.

Killua watches him go by, narrow eyes calculating. “You blew up your island,” he says.

“I don’t think so.” But even as he says the words, there’s another earth-shattering burst of flame, and another wrenching of the world as it resets. “I don’t remember, at least. Whale Island is still around.”

“You think.”

“I know it is! Aunt Mito gets letters for Elder Nui regularly—” Killua snickers, and Gon has to fight to not shove his friend down the hill before the small version of himself runs by again. “I’ll go home eventually. But I don’t remember this.”

Someone would have told him. Even if he was little, or if it was a mistake. They wouldn’t let him forget about…about…

“We need to find out why it brought me to your head,” Killua says.

“Okay.” It takes them a few more loops of explosions and running boys before they make it to the edge of town, a little clearing around the port with the elders’ storage house and the blacksmith. Gon had played here often when he was younger, excited to watch Poka and Lana transform metal into tools or artwork like Aunt Mito transformed dreams into pendants and potions. But the clanging of metal and the smell of the smithy is gone, leaving only a few people milling about aimlessly, as though they are waiting for the boy to run down and explode.

Which he does, sprinting into the clearing with the light in his hands. From here, Gon can see the flame, already reaching above his head and expanding rapidly out of control. And it keeps going and going, absorbing the clearing and the buildings and even the forest in the oddly colored fire. The glee on his young face rapidly shifts to horror, before he too is consumed in flame.

And then it’s done, and the clearing is back to normal.

Killua squeezes his hand gently, his blue eyes soft. “Gon?”

“I’m okay,” he says. “I don’t remember this.”

“It could be someone’s nightmare,” Killua says. “Or just a dream.”

But why would anyone dream this? It’s too specific, too close to Gon’s own memories. And the people on Whale Island, they wouldn’t have any reason to be in the capital, or have their dreams pull Killua out of his work and into Gon’s. And that it loops, over and over again, constantly producing the energy that sustains the portal, means it’s too powerful to be something made up. It has to be real.

Gon’s not sure if that’s scarier than it being a nightmare.

“Can you pause someone else’s dream, Killua?” he asks.

His friend frowns. “Not for long. Why?”

“I have a feeling.”

The frown deepens suspiciously. But before Killua can argue, the young version of Gon bursts out of the forest again, a soundless laugh on his lips that makes the others in the clearing turn. As the fire beings spiralling out of his hands, Killua snaps a word that sounds like jagged lines and pointed edges, and silver threads burst out of his free hand. They ensnare the boy and the flame with a series of runes, loops of thread gleaming as though sewn into the dream itself. Gon has learned a lot of Imperial Runes since moving to Masadora, as well as the South Sea patterns Knuckle and Shoot have taught him over the years. Even Elder Nui had taught him a few of Whale Island’s, delicate and solid by turns and passed down from elder to child. But none of them have ever looked like the runes Killua uses.

The veins on Killua’s neck stand out against his pale skin, and the scene freezes entirely. “Whatever you’re looking for, find it quick,” he says.

Gon’s not entirely sure what it is. But he approaches himself, pulling Killua with as they step around the flame, searching with his eyes and that extra magical sense that’s been itching at him since they’d opened the portal. It feels a lot like the mossy hole had back in his own dream, a sense of absence or emptiness that shouldn’t be there.

He spots it, directly beneath the younger him’s hands. “Killua, what’s that?”

The dreamwalker leans down to look, one hand still sketching runes and the other holding onto Gon like a lifeline. “What’s what?”

“There’s a…” An emptiness, a vacancy, a place where something should be but isn’t. “A hand, I think. Right here.”

Killua follows Gon’s gesture to the fuzzy empty space under the boy’s hands. Now that Gon’s noticed it, it’s as though there’s a whole person missing, their hands cupping the child’s as though guiding or reaching. It’s impossible to make out the person’s shape or build, but they seem familiar—bright eyes, coarse hair, Gon’s size or maybe a little shorter. And as strong as anyone he’s ever known, like they’re determined to have all the answers immediately.

“Someone erased themselves,” Killua says. “Cleanly, too. Maybe my father could do that, but I can’t. It’s almost entirely seamless. And then they still removed the memory. Who would do that, to make you not remember?”

Gon gnaws on his bottom lip for a moment. “My dad might,” he says.

Killua looks at him sideways. “Why would your dad do anything like that?”

“I don’t really remember him,” Gon says. “Some of the sailors would talk about him, when Aunt Mito wasn’t around. But he was supposed to be amazing at magic and worldbinding, enough that some of the elders thought he could vanish from the island and reappear with boxes he’d found all the way on the mainland.” He’d probably taken them out of his own dreams, Gon thinks, somehow found a way to manifest the dreams outside of the usual containers. Aunt Mito had never let Gon try, and his own experiments simply melted away as soon as he woke up.

“You need to be, to dreamwalk,” Killua says.

Gon jolts. “You think Ging was a dreamwalker?”

“It makes sense,” Killua says. “Whoever’s dream this is, if it’s yours or his or someone else’s, he managed to remove himself so completely that it changed the dream itself. I bet if you fill in the missing spot, you don’t explode. They stop you.”

The joy in little Gon’s eyes, like he’s going to show someone what he’s done…maybe. It’s a lot of maybes. “I don’t know if Ging would do that,” he says.

“You don’t know what he would do either—shit, get down!”

The runes flicker out, and the scene erupts with fire, knocking both of them back across the clearing and into the blacksmith. Gon smacks against the forge spine-first, whipping his neck to one side and knocking the wind out of him. Killua’s hand flies out of his as he goes spinning across the dirt, and a sound like a thread snapping echoes louder than the explosion.

For the first time, the dream doesn’t reset. Instead, the fire keeps growing and growing, close enough that Gon can feel the soles of his feet start to burn. He tries to scramble out of the way, drawing up as much willpower as he can muster, but there’s no magic for him to use, no dreams of his own to latch onto. Gon wonders if this is what Killua feels like all the time, horribly powerless except for what other people’s dreams allow.

A silvery rune appears beneath him as Killua throws himself bodily over Gon, and the fire skitters over them both as they drop through the ground. The fire rushes over where they had been, sending Killua’s hair into an even worse tangle of curls, and Gon can taste the ash and smoke of the forest going up in flames.

And then they land with a splash back in the oceans of Gon’s dreams. 

Gon kicks back to the surface, gulping down air out of relief. The little dream flickers merrily from where it bobs about in the water, unable to spread but not going out either. Killua floats nearby, white curls plastered to his forehead not unlike a cat dropped into a bath. “I told you not to let go, starblind,” he says, not entirely able to keep the relief out of his voice.

Rather than respond with words, Gon summons a wave and splashes his best friend back underwater.

When Killua resurfaces, Gon’s made the ocean walkable, and he pulls the dreamwalker up to sit on the gently rolling waves. Killua looks warily at the flame, still next to Gon—he’s not letting it get anywhere near the mostly wooden ships or docks, even in a dream. “Your dad, huh?” he asks. “He was a dreamwalker?”

“Maybe,” Gon says. “Ging didn’t leave me much, and Aunt Mito hates talking about him.”

“That’s a lot of uncertainty for you,” Killua says. He flops down onto the water, hands tucked behind his head. “Why would your dad want to remove himself from your memories?”

“He probably didn’t want me to remember him,” Gon says. What little he knows about Ging, Gon knows he valued a chase more than anything else. And where would the fun in a chase be if you could follow the other person?

“We should find him,” Gon says.

Killua raises an eyebrow. “Your dad went through all that trouble to erase himself, and you want to…to hunt him down?”

“Sure!” The more he thinks about it, the more interesting it sounds. This could have been a test, left for him. Once he finds Ging, he’ll be able to do anything. And if he can do anything, then even Aunt Mito wouldn’t be able to tell him to stay in Masadora forever. He could leave, he could explore, he could even find Killua, wherever he is. “And maybe Ging will know how to get your dreams back!”

Killua almost falls back underwater. “My dreams?” he says incredulously.

“If you can dream again, you won’t have to steal other people’s dreams to keep dreamwalking,” Gon says. “And we can go exploring together, or you can visit me for real!”

“I…” Killua tries to argue, but hope flickers in his blue eyes like the dream’s flame does on the ocean. “What would I be able to do? Other than keep you from getting killed.”

“You could look in other dreams while you’re working, or help me go over what I already know. Or find new ideas! You’re the smart one, Killua.”

His friend’s ears turn a little pink. “Only because you don’t think, sometimes.”

That earns him a wide smile, Gon’s heart beating double-time in his chest. “So you’ll help?”

“Of course,” Killua says quietly, and Gon tackles him with a hug. He lets out a squawk of indignation, face turning completely red in the process. “Gerroff, Gon!”

“No, I—”

 **_GON FREECSS_ ** , a voice bellows, great and terrible and full of motherly fury. The whole dream shudders, sky going pitch black and the colorful buildings of Masadora turning into gray sludge and falling into the ocean.

Killua’s blue eyes go wide, the only sign of color in the whole dreamscape. He starts to fade at the edges, a bad sign at the end of a dream. “What did you do?” he hisses.

“I…” The potions. Palm’s potions. How long has he been asleep? “Oh, shit.”

The ocean shakes as though a great hand picked it up and rattled it around, and Gon scrambles to pick up the flame and shove it into Killua’s hands. “Take care of it?” he says.

“I need it to leave!” Killua says.

Gon scowls, and grabs the first dream he can think of. It spools into his hands in golden threads, the brief memory of calm ocean seas and gentle breezes vanishing with a little _snap_ in the back of his mind. “Take it, Killua.”

“No!”

Gon ignores the protest and shoves the dream into his friend’s hands. “I’ll see you later, then!”

Killua vanishes with a curse, and Gon jerks upright in his chair.

Aunt Mito is inches from his nose, a furious glare in her green eyes. The whole room smells like burnt wax, and outside, Masadora is full of early afternoon crowds shouting and rushing through the streets. “What in fire and water are you doing, Gon?” she snaps. “And don’t tell me you were making Palm’s potions, because those are empty.”

“I was…” He reaches for the dream he was supposed to filter into the potions, and realizes that it’s gone. He gave it to Killua, who’s probably long gone at this point. And explaining his dreamwalking friend, even now… Aunt Mito wouldn’t believe him, or worse. “Sorry, Aunt Mito.”

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” she says, freckles bright against her dark skin. “You know better than to shape dreams while asleep. I’ve been trying to wake you up for ten minutes. We have to open the tavern soon, and if we leave Palm in charge, she’ll scare away all the new fish with the fat purses coming up from port.”

“I’m sorry,” Gon says again, and she sighs. But before she turns to go back downstairs, he says, “Aunt Mito, did Ging ever come back to Whale Island after he left me?”

She halts, spine going straight as a board. “Is that what you were dreaming about?”

“Sort of,” Gon says. It’s not totally a lie. “Did he?”

A conflicting set of emotions passes across her face, settling on wariness. “No. That useless scum of the earth left you with me and Gran, and never came back. No letter, no runes, not even a dirty sock.”

“Oh.” It hurts more than Gon had expected to hear her lie about Ging. Gon's not surprised. He's never had much luck asking her about Ging before, so it makes sense that she wouldn't say anything now. But it still hurts. 

Her eyes soften, and she pulls Gon into a strong-armed embrace. “You don’t need him to be my son, Gon. I love you.”

He hugs her back. “Love you, too,” he says.

“I know you have a lot of big dreams, Gon. But there’s a lot here for you, too. Don’t get so caught up in your dreams you forget to live.” She places both hands on his shoulders, looking him over. She’s only a little shorter than Gon is, but she has always seemed so much bigger to him. “And when you ignore my advice, be careful. You’re the only Gon I’ve got.”

He smiles at her. “I’m as careful as you.”

She ruffles his hair harder than is really necessary, a grin of her own hiding beneath her scowl. “Work on the potions tomorrow. I heard Palm’s passenger is still green from his trip, he can stop by later. Let’s open up for now.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **LXVIII**  
>  _We are no other than a moving row_  
>  _Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go_  
>  _Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held_  
>  _In Midnight by the Master of the Show_  
>  -The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyum (trans. Edward FitzGerald, 1889)

It’s the better part of a week before Gon has time to fix the potions for Palm. It’s the end of the sailing season for traders like Palm, but between the fishers who stop in for lunch, the merchants who come by for an early afternoon drink, or the mix of regulars and sailors that start streaming in around dinnertime and don’t leave until Aunt Mito kicks them out long past the night bells have stopped ringing, the tavern is too busy for breaks. And when he finally gets to sleep, he barely even has time to dream, the little bouts of shuteye he gets too brief or inconsistent to be of much use.

Aunt Mito’s tavern is close to port, like her old one back on Whale Island had been. But the one in Masadora is built of sturdy whitewashed stone splattered with brightly colored patterns, the work of locals paying for their drinks with decorating the facade rather than hard coin. Gon even has his own room, sleeping mat shoved far into the corner to make room for his work table and boxes of bottles and vials of all shapes and sizes and materials. If Aunt Mito had her way, they would be properly organized into shelves built into the walls for that express purpose. But Gon fills the shelves with books of maps, with scrolls full of notes, with the occasional reams of fabric Palm gifts him from faraway places with strange runes woven into them. There’s no space for  _bottles._

Gon’s never quite fit in Masadora. He doesn’t understood why so many of their customers wear multiple heavily-embroidered robes when it’s warm enough to go about in trousers and tunic, or why they prefer to weave runes into veils and undercoats that remain tucked into hidden pockets rather than wear the patterns on their sleeves. Locals keep their sleek black hair pinned carefully under turbans and veils, a practice that makes Aunt Mito’s fiery hair stand out even more than Gon’s thick black spikes. But the Freecsses aren’t the only foreigners in the port, even if they are the only ones from Whale Island, and they make it work. Aunt Mito’s magic is a curiosity, dream-based potions unlike the sturdy runes that mark the buildings and roads that make up the port city, or the rich embroidered runes in textiles like Palm sells, and their regular customers provide a steady stream of income to add to what they make from the tavern. Most importantly, Aunt Mito likes it here, even if her potions and dream-filled gemstones are as full of home as Gon’s.

For all that he dreams of Whale Island’s oceans, Gon doesn’t mind living in Masadora. But he doesn’t want to stay. Gon wants to travel, to look for clues for where Ging’s gone. Maybe Palm would take him next season, if he can prove himself useful. Gon has enough boat experience from growing up with sailors and enough dreamshaping experience from working for Aunt Mito in Masadora. He’s old enough to start branching out on his own. He knows Palm’s crew, and Knuckle and Shoot already said they’d like him aboard.

If he can convince Aunt Mito. Or maybe he can leave and send her a letter from wherever he ends up, book a seat on an airship headed to the Imperial capital and hope that Palm isn’t headed the same way. Maybe he could convince Killua to come with him, once they find Ging and get Killua’s dreams back. Somewhere to go, or a person to see in a place far away. He could even visit Killua, if Killua ever tells him where to go. And if not, it would be a surprise. Killua would like that.

…well, Killua would hate that, initially. But once Gon’s there, he can’t say no. Right?

“Hey, Gon! You doing okay?”

He looks up from his sweeping, trying to blink the thoughts out of his head. Leorio raises a mug from his seat at the bar, robes loose and tan skin still wan even after a week ashore. For a doctor, he doesn’t seem to have a good idea how to care for himself. Palm had picked him up on the other side of the Empire, fresh out of the Imperial Academy and looking for a new place to practice medicine. Aunt Mito refuses to let him have anything harder than watered-down wine and bowls of thin stew, something to settle his stomach when he should have been set to sail days ago—he’d even had to fight to get his money back from the next berth he’d rented, only succeeding when he’d thrown up all over the docks and still kept arguing finances. They don’t exactly have rooms to rent at the tavern, but with Aunt Mito staying with Palm most nights the traders are in port, it’s not hard to let Leorio have her room until he’s well enough to travel. She manages to make it from Palm’s to the tavern every day before opening, leaving the cleaning and prep work to Gon while she does the last-minute shopping.

Leorio, meanwhile, sleeps until lunch most days. Today is the first day he’s up early enough for breakfast, complaining about stomach cramps and nursing a little of Palm’s floral-scented tea. Killua’s probably like that too, sleeping as late as he can to dreamwalk as much as possible. But maybe he’d just like sleeping to sleep, too, if he could dream again on his own—

“Gon? Buddy?”

“I’m good!” he says, grinning widely.

Leorio looks at him over his tiny glasses. “You look like the wrong end of a nail being hammered into wood,” he says. When Gon doesn’t respond, the doctor adds, his accent making words roll off the side of his tongue, “You look like shit.”

“I’m good,” Gon says again.

“You’ve been sweeping the same spot for the last ten minutes. Either you’re lovesick, or your aunt is overworking you.”

Gon’s cheeks heat up, and he resolutely moves to a different part of the floor. “Aunt Mito’s my mom. And it’s not too busy yet,” he says.

“So it’s a girl? A boy? Someone else?”

For someone smart enough to pass the Imperial medical examinations, Leorio is really stupid. “I’m not lovesick, Leorio!”

Leorio clearly doesn’t believe him, waggling his eyebrows obnoxiously until Gon pokes him with the broom handle. “Even if you aren’t, you’re exhausted, Gon. And take it from a recently accredited Imperial doctor, I know what exhaustion is. How much have you slept since I got here?” Gon doesn’t answer, resolutely pushing dirt and food scraps into a sprawling pile, and Leorio groans. “Look, give me that.”

“What—”

The broom is tugged abruptly out of his hands. “Mito’s gone until the lunch rush starts. Go to your room and sleep. I’ll finish your cleaning.”

Gon glares up at Leorio’s grinning face. “You’re going to throw up all over the floor,” he says.

“I’ll be fine. I have the potion Mito made for me, and a few runes I can use.” He holds up an arm, revealing a row of black ink written across the inside of his forearm where his robes are pushed back. Gon can make out a few of the Imperial runes for wakefulness and health, even if most run together in a scrawl. The skin around the runes is reddened slightly like a sunburn. Leorio’s probably using his own body to power them, trying to kickstart his immune system rather than having it soak in through cloth. When Gon still doesn’t move, he says, “I’ll wake you up if your mom comes back early, alright? I can handle that much.”

Gon seriously doubts that—Aunt Mito is capable of removing someone’s skin at ten paces with a glare and a well-placed word. But the chance to dream and actually work on finding Ging is too good to pass up. He scrambles up to the living quarters and is asleep almost before his head hits his sleeping mats.

The ocean is the same color as Killua’s eyes and crystal clear, spread out across the dreamscape like the sky. Fish and ships of all shapes and colors swim back and forth, drifting on a breezy current. Beneath Gon’s feet, wide green leaves form a carpet covered with half-cleaned tavern furniture and platters of food that smell like whatever Aunt Mito has simmering in the kitchen.

Killua stands near a tree hung with stained glass windows, arms full of books and scrolls in more colors than Gon can name, and some that shouldn’t exist. He tries to walk over to Gon, but the stack wobbles precariously. The flame holding the island memory gleams merrily out of a little golden lantern, occasionally threatening to spill out of the top. “Where have you been?”

Gon rushes over to take some of the papers, ignoring the little shock of static from a few rune-marked ones as he drops them onto one of the tables. “Have you been waiting for me?” he asks.

Killua colors from his collar all the way to his hairline. “And what if I have?” he says, and Gon smiles widely. The admission makes the ocean-sky above turn a shimmering rainbow of color, cascading across the dream in parallel to Gon’s joy. It’s always a surprise that Killua keeps coming back, no matter how many dreams they’ve spent together. Killua flushes an even deeper color. “I mean. What was I supposed to do with the fire? It doesn’t die out, and I couldn’t exactly use it for dreamwalking.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s yours, starblind!” he says, and the flame explodes inside the lantern, momentarily whiting out the rest of the dream. When Gon’s eyes clear, Killua’s spilled half of the books onto the leafy floor, and the leaves under his feet are a little charred. He glares at Gon like it’s his fault. “And it keeps doing that.”

Gon flips a hand, and with an effort of will moves the books onto a few of the tables. They’re not anywhere close to as heavy as Killua is, just little bits of other people’s memories instead of a whole person, so he barely has to think about it. “What if you change it into something else?” he asks.

“That would destroy the memory, like dreamwalking. And it might turn into another portal to who-knows-where. Unless…” Killua’s eyes narrow, ideas spinning across his mind.

Gon already knows where he’s going. He sits down in front of the flame, picking it up by the lantern. Ordinarily, shaping a dream like this shouldn’t be too hard—if that dream were his in the first place. It has to be changed into something else, enough to fit into something that won’t burn or explode at the slightest emotion. The dream flutters in an unseen breeze, warming Gon’s skin to a point just past comfort. “I don’t have a vessel to hold it, not one that will last once I wake up,” he says. “Killua, could you make one?”

“Out of what?”

Gon pokes at the back of Killua’s gloves. “Your runes use dreams, right? Maybe you can make something solid out of them.”

Killua frowns, fingers twitching as though scribbling on parchment. Little marks of his strange runes runes begin to manifest, spilling off his gloves and up his arms or around his head until it fills the air with silvery light. Gon’s always found it fascinating, although experience has taught him trying to actually touch the partial runes leads to a feeling like being struck by lightning. If it doesn’t knock them both out of Gon’s dream, it usually makes Killua laugh, but Gon doesn’t want to risk it now. Killua mutters, “As long as you don’t try to manifest it, or warp it even more…Yeah, that could work!”

“What should I do?” Gon asks.

“You’re the one who can shape dreams. You figure it out.” He wraps his hands around Gon’s, silver thread rising off his gloves and around the lantern. He’s close enough that Gon can feel him at his back, tense but steady like wires on a violin or strands on a loom. “If we do this wrong, it’s going to explode and probably burn this whole place down. And I’m not cleaning up your mind if that happens.”

Gon smiles, excitement bubbling in his veins. “It’ll work. I trust you,” he says.

Gloved hands dig into his harder than necessary. “Idiot.”

With someone else, Gon might have waited for a signal, or a sign. But he feels the flame about to spike again, and on instinct, crushes the lantern under his hands. Some of the shattered glass bites into his palms, burning hotter than a forge from the heat of the memory-flame and lancing through his awareness, sharp enough to make the dreamscape fray at the edges. It should wake him up entirely. Instead, he channels that pain back into the fire, finding those same threads that had made it into a portal before and  _squeezing._

The flame doesn’t want to move. It’s not Gon’s memories, he can’t simply will it to be different, as much as he can’t will a fish to become a bird. But in dreams, things that should be impossible are easier to do, and he presses in closer with his hands and will, slowly but surely collapsing it into a star the size of a large coin. And around him, Killua’s fingers spin in rapid loops, leaving behind trails of silver thread until both of their hands are shining with fire and moonlight.

Killua’s whole body tenses, and Gon lets go.

Rather than an explosion, a glassy gem hangs in the air, the flame flickering at its heart. Gon can feel his heart pounding even through the dream, still bursting with nerves like he’s sprinted across the whole city in a moment. His hands ache with phantom wounds, the lantern’s shards dripping away as easily as ice melting under sunlight and the blood vanishing back into his veins. Killua simply flops over on top of him, toppling them both to the ground.

“That was a terrible idea,” he mutters in Gon’s ear, and Gon laughs breathlessly.

They should probably move. Gon doesn’t have much time before Leorio wakes him up, and it’s possible that the gemstone won’t hold the flame forever. And this position is really uncomfortable, the table pressing into his side at odd points and the buttons on Killua’s shirt digging into his skin. But Killua is close, and warm, and when he opens his eyes, they gleam with light that Gon could fall into forever.

It’s hard to remember this is still a dream, when Killua is so much more real than anything he could have ever imagined.

A clatter like an entire kitchen’s worth of pans crashing to the floor echoes through Gon’s dreams, and Killua shoves himself upright, running a gloved hand through his hair and only making his curls stick out in odd directions. He still has that odd light in his eyes, but it’s dimmed, hidden behind his usual grin. At least Gon knows that it’s there, a secret only for him.

Killua clears his throat. “You should hold onto that,” he says. A thin line of silver thread extends off his hands and thickens into a chain, looping around the stone like a pendant. He holds it out to Gon. “It’s your only real clue about your dad.”

The memory is still warm to the touch, not a violent burn but the feeling of sun-warmed grass or a familiar hand in his own. Gon lets Killua hang it around his neck, where it pulses gently in rhythm with his own heartbeat. On closer inspection, the glass isn’t flawless, little flecks of Gon’s blood trapped inside the smooth exterior. It catches the light of the fire and makes it seem like it’s dancing. “It’s pretty,” he says. “Like you, Killua.”

“Pretty doesn’t help us find your dad,” Killua says, his cheeks bright red. He strides back over to the piles of books, tossing a few across the tables as he looks for something absolutely nowhere near Gon. “Not that any of this did either. It’s like he doesn’t exist. And I looked  _everywhere.”_

“Aunt Mito wouldn’t say anything either. She says Ging never came back to Whale Island.” Gon opens the first book he can reach, a volume the size of one of Knuckle’s puppies made of black paper and golden script. He can’t read the words, but the content worms its way into his mind like an errant dream. Something about an old city, ruined and empty except for a lone traveler, certain in their step and not caring where they end up.

Killua closes it carefully and unspools a scroll. “That lines up with this,” he says. “It’s from the same dream I found the flame dream in.”

“The one where you messed up and set off an alarm?”

“Yeah, that.” Killua resolutely ignores Gon’s muffled giggles and winds the scroll to the right spot. “The dreamer’s some big government peacock, and after my last dreamwalk, her mind’s locked down worse than a safe. But I managed to get this. Do you think it’s familiar?”

Smirking up from the paper is a face Gon’s never seen before. The man’s spiky black hair is a tangled mess beneath an old cloth, outer robes not the fashionable Imperial sort but practical, designed for days of travel through harsh environments. Someone drew over his face in red ink, scrawling a variety of curses and insulting remarks about his appearance and manner, but they can’t cover up familiar brown eyes identical to Gon’s own, gleaming with amusement at someone else’s expense.

“Ging,” Gon says.

“I don’t think my target liked him very much,” Killua says, poking at the red line demeaning Ging’s inability to bathe or arrive at meetings on time (or ever).

“Aunt Mito doesn’t either,” Gon says, and Killua snorts.

“Yeah, well, he erased himself from you. The least he could do is leave an explanation why.”

Gon wonders at the scorn in Killua’s voice. “Isn’t that what you do when you steal people’s memories?” he asks.

Killua’s mouth thins, worrying at his lips before he speaks. “I don’t know. The point of taking memories is that the target forgets, or they change somehow. Then my family gets paid, and I keep dreamwalking. Most people don’t know how to control their own dreams, not like you can.” Killua turns over his gloves, silver embroidery twinkling up from the gray cloth. Not for the first time, Gon wonders just which runes are sewn there, or if Killua has them in the real world, too. The dreamwalker shakes himself out of his thoughts. “If I could, I’d stop, or find another way. But this is the only way I know how to keep going.”

“Would you take my memories of you?”

The words are out before Gon really thinks about them. But as Killua stares at him, Gon wonders what that would be like—to not have Killua in his dreams even sometimes, to forget he was there at all. To have that same emptiness around him that the younger version of himself did, only instead of forgetting Ging, he’d forgotten his best friend and didn’t even know. It would be like forgetting the color of the ocean, or the smell of Aunt Mito’s fish stew—impossible to even imagine. As impossible as remembering Killua, but never seeing him again at all.

Killua’s expression softens. “I’d never do that. Not to you.”

“Thanks, Killua.”

Killua doesn’t respond, glaring intently at the scroll with Ging’s face on it. “I can check out a few of the other places this scroll mentions, but I can’t promise I’ll find anything, this was pretty much everyth—”

“Killua!”

“What, Gon.”

He grins, wrapping his hand around the dream pendant. “Thank you. Really. I couldn’t do this without you.”

Killua blushes. “Shut up and look through here. Maybe you’ll find something I missed.”

 

* * *

 

Aunt Mito is standing over him with her arms crossed when he wakes up, a resigned frown carved into her face. “How many times do I have to—”

“Sorry, Aunt Mito,” Gon says before she can start scolding him, like he’s still a child and reckless enough to throw himself off a roof to see if he could fly. Not seventeen and…well, still reckless, but he has a  _reason._ Not that he can explain right now. She doesn’t stay to listen for an explanation either, stomping back out of Gon’s room and towards the tavern. Gon scrambles behind her, because if he didn’t follow she’d just come back for him and drag him out by his ears.

She halts at the foot of the stairs, Leorio scrambling to his feet. His threadbare overcoats have long since vanished, revealing a sweat-stained undertunic and hair tied back with what might be a handkerchief but Gon suspects is part of one of Aunt Mito’s rarely-used tablecloths. A few more rags, most scrawled on with inky runes, lie in a pile on the floor, smelling of oil and dust. Gon tries not to blame Leorio. Aunt Mito is an unstoppable force when she wants to be. But she does glare at Leorio as well, a step up from the annoyance she sends back Gon’s way.

Behind him, the tavern is spotless. Gon wouldn’t have been able to clean it like that on his own, not without a week of scrubbing until his skin is raw and the tavern smells more of potions than food. Knuckle and Shoot lean against the heavy tavern tables, in similar states of dress and exhaustion as Leorio—well, Shoot is partially hiding under the high collar of his purple coat, but Knuckle is simply bare chested. Both of them have cotton fabric the same texture and whiteness of Knuckle’s usual shirts tied on the backs of their hands and looping up their arms, thick black runes bleeding across the fabric.

“Hey, kid,” Knuckle mumbles from where he’s pillowed his head against a set of mugs. “Careful, Mito’s gonna kill ya.”

“I suppose I should have expected this sooner or later,” she grumbles.

Most people would quail against Aunt Mito’s grumbles, and Leorio is one of them. Despite being more than a head taller, the doctor looks like a mouse being stared down by a very large, very angry panther. But either out of bravery but more likely out of sheer foolhardiness, he keeps pressing. “Gon was falling asleep on his feet, and I don’t know any seventeen year old who doesn’t need more sleep. But I can reshine the bar if it wasn’t—”

Aunt Mito holds up a hand, cutting him off before he can offer to clean the tavern again. “Oh, no. You’ve done enough.”

“I offered, miss,” Leorio says, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “Gon needs better sleep.”

“You need rest as well. And forced Palm’s underlings into service as well?” she says.

“We ain’t underlings—”

“Unfortunately Knuckle, we are and you know it.”

If Aunt Mito glowered any harder, she’d be able to turn tempests back from the shore with a single look. Gon’s simply glad it’s not turned on him at the moment. “Fire and water, doctor, you’re never going to leave Masadora if you don’t stay off your feet for more than ten minutes.”

Leorio’s nervous rubbing speeds up. “I uh…was actually thinking about staying here,” he says.

Knuckle, Aunt Mito, and Gon all start speaking over each other, Gon’s attempts to ask Leorio what he  _wants_ in Masadora half-drowned out by Knuckle’s exuberant cheering and Aunt Mito swearing that she wants her bed back eventually and she’s not much interested in sharing with anyone but Palm these days. Shoot gnaws worryingly at his bottom lip, backing steadily away from the shouting match.

The front door slams open, Palm’s arms full of baskets overflowing with sweet-smelling bread and fruit. There’s flour splattering her black veil and across her cheeks, some even covering the gemstone in the center of her forehead. It doesn’t disguise the terrible scowl on her face. “Where have you  _been,”_ she demands to her underlings.

Knuckle and Shoot each flop exhausted gestures at Leorio, who waves meekly. Palm’s gemstone flashes a brilliant, angry green, and she stalks towards the doctor breathing malicious intent. Leorio tries to hide behind Aunt Mito. He’s far too tall to hide successfully, and Gon tries to cover his giggles with a free hand.

“You can’t kill him, love,” Aunt Mito says, seemingly oblivious to the malevolence blackening the air around her.

Palm glowers at the shorter woman. “And why not.”

Aunt Mito glances back and up at the man cowering behind her, a mild smile on her face. Gon has a sudden feeling that he knows exactly how his mom feels when he has that same expression. “I’m hiring him as a housecleaner.”

“I’m an Imperial doctor, not a maid!” Leorio splutters.

Palm finally looks around at the tavern, and her jaw drops. “Merciful seas, what happened to this place.”

“I can offer you room and board, and you can work out of the tavern during mornings until you secure your own storefront,” she says. “Gon’s got enough space in his room for an extra mat, if you can work the same cleaning magic on his room as you did in the tavern.”

Gon frowns. “It is organized, Aunt Mito!”

She scoffs. “I can identify which pile is clean and which one is dirty. The only thing organized in there is your worktable, and not by any system I taught you.”

“Just because I had to clean houses to get through the Academy, doesn’t mean I have to do the same thing here,” Leorio says.

“Oh, this will last only until you can pay rent, ” Aunt Mito says. “Then I will help you find a new room. Decent food, a central location, potions when you need them, access to the apothecary. And baked goods, while Palm’s in port.”

Leorio actually looks like he’s considering this, and Gon bites his lip to keep from smiling. “I want this in writing, and I get to determine the final cost of living.”

Aunt Mito grins with all of her teeth. The port merchants on Whale Island have the same smile whenever new foreigners arrive thinking they can outbid islanders. Gon wonders if he should warn Leorio, or simply stay out of the battle of haggling. “Within reason. You provide the parchment, doctor.”

“I love you, Mito, yet I refuse to produce anything for those who steal my workers to clean. They should be finalizing the books or negotiating the next series of patterns from the weavers,” Palm says. She gestures at Knuckle and Shoot with her cookies and breads, selecting a pale cookie with caramel-looking insides and jabbing it threateningly towards the rest of the room. “These will be for  _none of them.”_

Leorio visibly salivates, apparently ignoring everything else Palm says. “…You can make alfajores?”

Palm glares, softened only slightly as Mito loops an arm around her waist and stuffs a handful of cookies into her mouth. “Of course. I am not a barbarian.”

Gon asks, “What are alfajores?” Right on cue, both Palm and Leorio begin gesturing wildly, attempting to talk over each other about about cookies that melt in your mouth and  _dulce de leche_ and grated coconut, Palm going into too much detail about baking temperatures and Leorio arguing the pros and cons of cornstarch. With how much she loves baking, and how opinionated she is about it, there’s no chance Palm will keep arguing. Mito takes one look at her son and sighs, knowing that he knows exactly what he’s done.

Gon scoops up Palm’s basket with a grin and starts setting tables, the friendly sound of bickering a backdrop to his thoughts.

 

* * *

 

It goes like that for awhile: Mornings spent filtering memories into potions when he can, then days and evenings working for Aunt Mito, serving tables and sweeping the floors when he’s not keeping Leorio out of the spice rack. When he sleeps, he and Killua look through whatever Killua’s stumbled across, ripped away from other people’s dreams and used as magic for when Killua needs to go. When he can, he teases what information about dreamwalking he can out of Killua, even if he still refuses to explain how to remove other people’s dreams or twist them into power. Gon doesn’t want to do that, anyways—it hurts Killua to not have dreams, and Gon doesn’t want to do that to anyone else. He has enough memories to draw on as it is, and he can always make more. A morning walk to port for the day’s catch makes as useful a memory thread as a first friend, or a last goodbye. They’re not as powerful individually, barely enough to illuminate water. But Gon quickly discovers he can bind a bunch of the little memories together to get the power the dreamwalker needs, an instinct he hadn’t known he had until he’d tried. It comes easier than potion-making or any other dreamshaping ever had, as though he’s been doing this his whole life.

They run out of leads almost immediately. The text memories Killua has aren’t of any use. While some scrolls have Ging’s face on them, the peacock Killua took them from has locked away the rest of her memories in a place even the dreamwalker can’t reach. Whatever other secrets she has left (and Killua insists Cheadle Yorkshire has a  _lot,_ as a leading aristocrat in the Imperial Capital), Killua can’t get to them. And Gon won’t let him try to sneak into Aunt Mito’s mind. Unlike regular people who don’t manipulate dreams, or even worldbinders with their ability to change the physical world with ink or thread, dreamshapers like Aunt Mito and Gon know what goes on in their heads. She’d be able to notice the slightest discrepancy, even as light a touch as Killua claims. It was how Gon had noticed Killua the first time they’d met, the presence of  _not right_ that surrounds the dreamwalker in every dream. Even on the slight chance Killua would be able to get in and out of Aunt Mito’s dreams with the right memory, Gon wouldn’t want to betray her trust like that. He’s going to find Ging on his own terms. And then she can’t tell him no when he leaves.

Between reading tomes of all shapes and sizes in languages that translate themselves in front of Gon’s eyes, Killua takes him dreamwalking. Gon is only able to grasp a few of the more basic runes—the script keeps dripping off of paper and parchment, skittering out of his grasp before he can catch it. But with what he knows about changing his own dreams, and what Killua knows about dreamwalking and his strange jagged runes, they manage. Gon chooses where to go, Killua gets them to the dreamscape, and Gon leads them around, trying and usually failing to craft magic out of his own memories. They still haven’t found a workaround for physical contact, something that makes sure the magic thread made of his memories and Killua’s magic doesn’t break and leave them stranded in someone else’s dreams—particularly risky, since most people aren’t lucid dreamers or dreamshapers, and wouldn’t know if someone gets stuck in their dreamscape.

But Gon doesn’t mind. He likes holding Killua’s hand, memorizing the soft contours of the gray gloves until he knows where every seam is, or how much pressure it takes before Killua’s nails start to press through the fingertips. It’s warm and familiar and good, even if Killua won’t admit it.

Occasionally, he’ll bribe Killua with dreams of Palm’s baking, which always leads to new stories about her and Aunt Mito, or of Leorio’s attempts at finding a medical practice to work at while also keeping the tavern cleaner than it’s ever been. Once as a demonstration, Gon manifests both the old and new tavern rooms, the only differences being Leorio’s handiwork, and Killua proceeds to eat puff pastries off the floor just to prove a point. They don’t get much done that night.

Without much time for rest, Gon wakes up as tired as when he fell asleep, to Leorio’s knowing glances and Aunt Mito’s unending annoyance. Still, she doesn’t ask about it, and Gon doesn’t offer to explain. She’ll probably force him to stop, and Gon doesn’t want to. He wants to find Ging, and he wants to spend as much time as he can with Killua. It’s selfish, but Gon doesn’t care.

Tonight, Killua’s brough a scroll in the mountains of the Walled Kingdom to the far northeast, a painting that in reality was likely done in pale watercolor but in the owner’s dream is instead made of different colors of ocean swirling together to form a mountain. The dreamwalker had spent most of their hunt for the painting complaining about how often he runs into oceans while being with Gon, and how often that leads to him ending up drenching or drowning or worse. Gon nods and lets him rant, content to watch the expressive gestures his hands make or the gleaming promise in his eyes. The painting doesn’t hold much of use, anyways, only a tiny figure that  _might_ have been Ging if Gon stands on his head and squints. But it’s nice, being with Killua, in a way that burrows into Gon’s bones.

They end up outside the dreamer’s gallery, feet dangling over an unending twilight forest. Far below, purpling mist blends with the dark forest, trees nearly tall enough to reach the edges of their cliff. Gon wonders sometimes if the people whose dreams they travel through ever see these expanses, the impossible creations of an unconscious mind. Some must, even if they forget when they wake up. Others wouldn’t ever want to leave, lost in memories.

Maybe that’s what happened to Ging. Maybe he went looking for a dream and never came back.

Is that something Gon would want to do? Where does he want to go, and how far would it be before he’d want to go back? For now, Gon’s not sure, as long as he’s with Killua.

“That was a bust,” Killua says, voice shattering Gon’s thoughts like a stone breaks a window. From here, the forest reflects off the bottom of his face, turning the edges of his curls the same colors as the sky but leaving the top of his head pure white. It gives his pale skin a ghostly sheen, warmed only slightly by the flame pendant shining softly from around Gon’s neck. “I thought maybe he’d have more paintings, but all they have is weird word mush.”

“The one about the dogs was funny,” Gon says.

Killua scrunches up his nose. “Only if you think a whole scroll repeating the word  _bark_ seventeen times isn’t a waste of space,” he says.

“I know Knuckle would love it,” Gon says, and makes a mental note to copy it to a scroll for his friend when he wakes up. Palm would help, if he asked. Or if he said it was for himself before giving it to Knuckle. He doesn’t want Palm to take it out of her subordinate’s pay. Even if they’re stuck in port for at least another month before their shipment comes in, it’s better to make sure Knuckle isn’t immediately affected. He is the one balancing her books, after all.

Knuckle’d be the one to ask about leaving with Palm’s crew, probably. Palm would talk to Aunt Mito immediately, and Shoot worries too much to give an immediately answer. Leorio would help, probably, but he’s been spending his days looking for a place to open up his own medical practice, somewhere close enough to Aunt Mito’s tavern that he can still drink for cheap and risk life and limb to steal Palm’s pastries.

Strong fingers tighten over his, and Gon looks up to nervous blue eyes. “How long do you want to keep looking?” Killua asks.

“For Ging?”

Killua nods. “We’ve only been looking for a few months, but it’s like there’s nothing. We even came all the way to this empty sky of a dream in the middle of the South Sea, and all we have is one lousy portrait that isn’t even him,” he says. “It’s not like you have time to spend all day dreaming, and my brother is going to realize I’m not doing my job—” He cuts himself off, biting his lip as though trying to keep himself silent.

Killua’s not normally this nervous, even about his family of dreamwalkers. “Are you not working?”

Killua ducks his head, twilight-streaked white curls drifting around his ears and over his eyes. Gon wants to reach out and push them back, but doesn’t. Not yet. “Just for a little while. Until we find your dad. And then…”

“Then you’ll get your dreams back,” Gon says. And if Killua has his dreams back, he doesn’t have to keep dreamwalking. He can do anything. Like come to visit Gon.

Killua lets out a puff of air too caustic to be a sigh. “If I get them back. And if we can find your dad. And  _if_ he even knows what to do. Just because he can make himself vanish doesn’t mean he has all the answers.”

“He probably doesn’t,” Gon admits, and Killua flops onto the ground, free arm stretched over his face as if to block out the sun. Specks of shimmering dust cover his dark blue shirt in a cloud of miniature stars. “But Ging has to know something! He can’t take away a whole dream and not have an idea where to start. It’ll work out.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Gon tilts his head. “Then I’ll still have you. And I’ll help you get your dreams back, no matter what.”

Killua doesn’t respond, gloved hand loose in Gon’s. A bell-like bird call rings out of the forest, like a chime for dinner from very far away. Hopefully whose dream this is doesn’t wake up too soon. “Do you want your dreams back, Killua?”

“I should, right?” Killua mutters into his sleeve. When he doesn’t continue, Gon leans over to physically tug his arm away from his face. Killua doesn’t resist, his expression unreadable. For a long moment, Gon doesn’t know what’s going on in his best friend’s head, and that is scarier than any nightmare.

But this is Killua. Even if he lies, even if he won’t ever completely tell Gon the truth, Gon trusts him. And that’s more important than anything else.

For the first time he can remember, Gon asks, “Why don’t you dream, Killua?”

Killua goes entirely still, the only sign that he hasn’t simply left this dream the slight fluttering of his eyelashes. He doesn’t look at Gon. “I don’t know,” he finally says.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Gon says. The words come too fast to sound as sincere as they are, so Gon takes a deep breath and tries again. “I know I asked, but if you don’t want to, that’s okay too.”

All he gets from that is another sigh. “I’m not lying,” Killua says, voice aching with old wounds. “Not about this. All I remember is I gave up all my memories of my dreams, and I can dreamwalk through other people’s dreams because of it. It must have been important, or powerful, if it’s kept me going for this long. Whatever I gave up, I sewed it into my gloves, and my brother wrote it into my skin.” As he speaks, he tugs up the back one of his gloves, revealing black runes nearly identical to the silver embroidery on his gloves. While the embroidery is floating and ethereal, these pitch black lines bleed across his skin, spreading from the backs of his hands across his palms in precise, deliberate ink. They clash with Killua’s pale skin and the ethereal twilight forest before them, and it’s hard for Gon to look at them for too long. The lines feel like the mossy hole in his dreams had been, something that doesn’t belong and clashes with reality. Only instead of marking a wall it’s etched into Killua.

“Does it hurt?” Gon asks.

“I don’t notice it anymore,” Killua says and pulls his glove back on, squeezing Gon’s hand with his fingers as the silver thread tightens around their wrists. Before Gon can protest that’s not an answer, he says, “I can’t dream because I chose not to, and I forgot whatever it was that made me choose that. And I don’t know if I want to remember.”

“You don’t have to, Killua. It’s your choice,” Gon says.

“You were so excited about your dad, and dreamwalking, and I didn’t want you to not be. If we find your dad, he’ll know something’s missing, and I…” Killua goes back to looking anywhere but Gon, focusing on a little boxy animal jumping from treetop to treetop. “I like being with you. I didn’t want that to end.”

“Of course it wouldn’t end!” Gon blurts out.

Killua starts, and would have fallen towards the edge of the cliff if his hand weren’t trapped in Gon’s. He scrambles back up to solid ground, a wild look in his eyes. “You can’t say that!” he says.

“I did, so I can,” Gon says.

“What if I’m not who you think I am? Or I was hiding something, and my brother made sure it never gets out? Or—”

“You’re my best friend,” Gon says slowly, to make sure Killua hears. “That’s true whether or not you’re hiding something you don’t know about.”

“You don’t understand, Gon! I could be like my brother,” Killua says, a note of resigned terror threading through his words, and Gon hates Killua’s brother, hates how he can make Killua despair without even being in the same place. “You don’t know Illumi. I could be a person that makes nightmares when he dreamwalks, not just stealing people’s memories but making their nights miserable, until they can’t sleep without seeing his eyes everywhere. Or I could be even worse!”

“You’re not,” Gon says.

“How would you know?” Killua says.

“Because I do!” Gon insists, barreling through whatever protest Killua tries to splutter. “You’re Killua, and you’re my best friend. Whether or not you get your dreams back, whatever happens, that won’t change.”

Killua stares at Gon, so surprised that he can’t disguise the brilliant flash of hope exploding like a starburst in his eyes. It’s an expression that fits Killua, one that makes Gon’s heart stutter in his chest and a smile spread across his face. He wants Killua to look like that all the time, happy and excited and all of it directed at Gon. The desire doesn’t fade, only growing as a gloved hand reaches up to trace the freckles on Gon’s cheek. He leans into the touch, close enough that he can feel the warmth of his friend’s breath on his lips, and Killua’s sharp blue eyes burn in wonder.

“You really are a starblind idiot,” Killua says fondly, in a way that means thank you.

The gong rings out louder this time, sending the fox-like birds flying across the forest sky. Killua drops his hand, and Gon abruptly feels colder, even with their other hands still clasped tight. Behind them, the glass gallery begins to go dark, lights flickering on and off as the artist dreamer falls back towards wakefulness. Gon pulls them both to their feet, watching as Killua sketches out the silvery rune that will take them back to Gon’s dream.

“Hey, Killua?”

“Yeah?” The dreamwalker spares a quick glance as he finishes the runes, silver strung through with Gon’s gold to make sure they get back painlessly and  _don’t_ end up dumped in yet another ocean. Gon doesn’t mind, but Killua’s complained several times about what brine does to his boots, no matter if they’re just a figment of his conscious mind. They take a quick step through the shimmering portal, and then they’re back in Gon’s dreamscape of sun-streaked boats and beaches made of glimmering rainbow sand. Fish and salamanders swim out of the water and through the air, shedding feathers and scales as they dart past sails floating across the sky like clouds. Gon can make out the beginnings of the predawn calls outside his window in Masadora, echoing across the ocean.

There are a hundred different things to ask, but if Gon thinks too much about it, he’ll never find the right one. So he says, hand still wrapped in Killua’s, “If you could dream, what would you want to do?”

“You mean, other than never have to work for my family ever again?” Killua says. Gon nods seriously. “I guess…I’d want to fly.”

Gon takes a step up into open air, ignoring the increasing volume of the waking world by forcibly turning down the volume. It lends an odd muffled quality to the air, but he can hear Killua clearly. “We can go flying now!” he says.

But Killua shakes his head. “Even if you weren’t waking up, that’s not what I want. You’re letting me fly, because it’s your dream.  _I_ want to fly, by my own choice, somewhere you’re not supposed to. If I could leave home, or fly away in an airship, that would be one thing. But…”

Killua stretches, shoulders cracking as he reaches up to the sky. One of the salamanders, a green one with bright orange wings, flutters down and settles in his hands right where the black marks are hidden by his gloves. It draws out a quiet little smile, one that Gon’s only rarely seen on his best friend’s face. “If I could remember my own dreams, I would be able to figure something out,” he says.

A breeze pushes Gon a little further up into the sky, until he’s even taller than Killua. “Why don’t we try? Together?”

“I already told you, it doesn’t count in your dreamscape,” Killua says.

It’s hard to keep the grin out of his face. “Then we’ll go to someone else’s!”

The dreamwalker splutters incredulously. “You want to go with me to some random dreamscape where neither of us have any control over anything, where you have no idea where or when we’re going, so I can fly in someone else’s dream? Will that even work?”

Gravity returns Gon to the beach with a thump, sand spitting out from beneath his bare feet and bringing him almost nose-to-nose with his friend. “You’ve already taken us both dreamwalking a bunch of times. And even if I can’t do magic in other people’s dreams on my own yet, you’ll be the one making us fly. We’ll figure it out together.”

“I…” They’re so close that Gon doesn’t miss the way Killua’s throat bobs as he swallows, nervous jitters making him think much too hard. But whatever debate Killua has behind his eyes is quickly settled, and he grins at Gon. “Yeah. Together.”

“Tonight?”

Killua’s smile widens with reckless delight. The little salamander curls around Killua’s shoulder, cooing in the warmth of the sun and Gon’s pendant. “Tonight. Now wake up, starblind.”

 

* * *

 

The whole day drags.

Since he and Killua started looking for Ging, Gon hasn’t gotten a full night’s rest. It’s not Killua’s fault, or the fault of the dreams: Gon simply wants to spend as much time with Killua as he can, wandering through unfamiliar dreamscapes to find something that Ging left behind, that neither Gon or the dreamwalker knows what it’s like. And while his potions and dreamshaping has been better than ever, the lack of rest leaves him wandering while he’s awake, distracted mid-conversation with Knuckle or drifting into half-awake inattention while Leorio tries to explain Imperial runes. Even the earsplitting cacophony of the tavern at its busiest can’t keep him awake sometimes, leading Aunt Mito to rope Leorio into filling in for Gon more than once.

Those times hurt. Gon doesn’t want to let his mom down. Still, he also wants to find Ging, and he wants to help Killua.

Today, the problem isn’t staying awake, it’s staying focused. Gon’s every nerve is lit up by excitement and curiosity, wondering where Killua will take him or what will happen when they try to fly. Gon knows that whatever they try will work eventually, a certainty that pools in his chest and spreads in a flood. This will work, because Gon will make it work no matter what. He wants to see Killua  _fly._

But he’s also walked into Leorio three separate times with the broom, nearly running down a scurvy-stricken sailor Leorio accused of eating maybe a single vegetable in his life. (The man had protested that he’d  _never_ eaten a vegetable, and the doctor looked to have vanished into his own personal nightmares.) For all his grumbling about Aunt Mito not paying him for cleaning services, Leorio has also refused payment from most of the Masadorans that come in for help with a wide variety of illnesses over the past weeks. It’s gotten to the point that Aunt Mito has started setting payment schedules for him, at least for the more affluent merchants coming into the tavern looking for Imperial runes and raising their noses at the regular people eating lunch.

So now Gon’s not allowed near that corner of the tavern until he gets what Leorio calls “real sleep, not rusting magic half-sleep.” Gon will get rest, but not tonight. Tonight’s too important for that.

He drops the broom into the storage bin with Leorio’s runes painted on the side, sure he’s finished cleaning properly this time, and turns to find his mom staring at him with a bemused smirk on her face and a bowl of room-temperature stew sitting next to her. The tavern’s mostly empty, a few of the late lunchtime regulars nursing their drinks and Leorio pouring over a ream of parchment with his glasses pushed up to his forehead.

“You forgot to eat,” she says. It smells good enough that Gon can’t help but close his eyes and carefully seal away the mix of fish and curry and tomatoes and the saffron Palm had bartered in port in exchange for a whole ream of cloth.

Aunt Mito starts to say something but pauses, recognizing the act of deliberate memorization. Gon doesn’t go through these motions often anymore, only for important memories—they’re supposed to be for potions, but more and more they’re for Killua. And Aunt Mito’s cooking smells  _amazing._ After a long moment, she shoves the bowl towards him. “If you don’t eat, the doctor will have both our asses. Not to mention Palm and her underlings getting in my ear about not feeding you.”

“You do feed me,” Gon says, and his stomach growls loud enough to wake a dreamer. “Sorry, Aunt Mito.”

“Don’t apologize, eat. When you’re done, make sure Leorio knows to drop by the kitchen—for someone so concerned with health, he’s terrible with his own.”

Gon laughs midway through his first bite, accidentally spitting some of it back into the bowl. His mom sighs and pushes over a stack of colorful cotton napkins, leftovers Palm had given the tavern after a particularly large shipment last year. But as he eats, his mom watches him with an odd look, a strange half-smile on her lips.

“You’ve been dreaming a lot lately,” she says. “Anything good?”

A thousand different memories of Killua’s grin play across Gon’s mind, but that’s not what she’s asking about. He says, “Have you ever tried to fly, Aunt Mito?”

She raises an eyebrow, fighting to keep the smile from spreading across her face. “You mean, did I throw myself off of Nui’s roof and scare the depths out of my mom?”

Gon’s cheeks warm, and he shoves another spoonful of stew into his mouth. “I was seven,” he says. The words sound like overstuffed coconut balls, and his mom grins.

“You were seven, but I was nineteen. It still scared me, almost as much as when…” Her expression grows strained. When Gon had been little, it had meant that she was drinking again but didn’t want Gran to know about it. But she hasn’t been drinking, not so much that her breath stinks and her eyes are fuzzy. Gon would know.

“When what, Aunt Mito?” he asks.

Rather than explain, she runs a hand through her coarse red hair, making it stick up in odd directions. “No, I haven’t tried to fly. Why do you ask?”

Gon takes his time swallowing the rest of the fish. “I want to fly. And I thought, maybe Ging could help me with…”  _with Killua’s dreams,_ he almost says, but that would mean explaining dreamwalking and Killua, and Gon doesn’t want to share that with her yet “—flying.”

Aunt Mito’s smile falls off her face. “Is this why you’ve been dreaming so much?” she demands. “Whatever it is, he’s not worth it.”

“Why not?” Gon asks, and Mito’s expression darkens like a storm. “You don’t want to talk to him. But if he can help me, I want to try.”

“You don’t even know where he is,” she says.  _“I_ don’t know where he is. He could be lost in the fiery depths for all I know, and you shouldn’t care.”

“That’s why I need to find him!” Gon says. He doesn’t know when he rose, but he stands nose to nose with his mom, not backing down from the roiling fire in her eyes. “Aunt Mito, I’m old enough, I know what I can do.”

“No, you don’t!” she snarls, and her hands smash into the table. Gon’s mostly-empty bowl falls off, heavy clay landing on the floor with a crash. Bits of lukewarm stew go splattering across the floor and Gon’s bare feet. The rest of the tavern goes completely still, Leorio watching from his corner with worried eyes.

“No,” she says again, and her voice echoes through the silent room.

“I’m going to find Ging,” Gon says. “I’ve never met him, and you won’t look for him. He left something for me.”

“Ging didn’t leave anything behind, except for you,” she says.

Gon stills, fists frozen at his side. He knows Ging left him. He knows Ging doesn’t care. Maybe he didn’t even leave anything behind. And it hurts, more than anything, like swallowing broken glass until the shards stick in his throat. But that doesn’t matter. He’s going to find Ging, and he’s going to get Killua’s dreams back. Everything else doesn’t matter. Not Masadora, not his mom, not anything.

“Even if he didn’t, I’m going to try,” he says.

“Gon, don’t—”

He ignores her, taking the stairs two at a time back up to his room.

Killua’s already in Gon’s dreamscape when he drops in, fiddling with a dream trapped in a thin sheet of black glass, runes in Killua’s language embossed almost invisibly on one side. Whenever his fingers tap against the glass, it lets off little black snowflakes, which twirl up into the hot humid air of Gon’s dream and cast a crystalline rainbow across Killua’s pale cheeks. As soon as he notices Gon, his whole face lights up.

“Hey, Gon! I found this in storage, some South Sea peacock tried to hire me and my brother but never actually paid, so I kept it with—” He cuts himself off, eyes narrowing as though spotting a stripe of dirt on Gon’s face. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Gon says, and begins to spool together a thick thread of memories from the first time he’d flown in an airship. It takes more time than usual, little moments of Aunt Mito slipping in and out of his grasp like the memories can’t decide if they want to stay with him or vanish.

Killua crosses his arms over his chest and leans in closer, glass tucked under one arm. “You sure? You look like someone cut the wings off a bird. We can try another time.”

Gon shakes his head vehemently. Tonight, this dream, whatever they do—it’s for Killua. And Killua has enough to worry about without hearing about Aunt Mito or Ging. Gon can handle these things on his own. They’re his problems, after all, no one else’s.

The dreamwalker isn’t wholly convinced, studying Gon’s face with a thin-mouthed glare. So Gon reaches out and loops a new memory around Killua’s wrist, letting it tangle with the silvery embroidery as he laces their fingers together. It sends little comforting sparks across his skin, and the fire pendant warms against his chest in response. “I’m always better with you, Killua,” he says, because that’s the truth.

Killua’s face turns pink and he turns away. But he returns Gon’s grip and doesn’t mention it again. “Then let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Killua takes him to a city inhabited by shadows, an eerie feeling on the breeze contrasting warmly lit buildings and cheerful golden streetlights glimmering in the snow. Despite how his breath comes in frosty clouds, Gon doesn’t shiver—in fact, he doesn’t even bother to change his clothes from the sleeveless tunic and flowing trousers he wears in his own dreams. The flame pendant is as warm as ever against his chest, creating a soft burst of light against the city’s darkness. Killua, on the other hand, has added a long wool coat over his collared shirt, the same deep blue as the night sky and embroidered with the faint silver whirls of his gloves. If Gon’s not looking directly at him, the embroidery drifts between the coat and his gloves, some of it even wafting off the fabric entirely. If Gon times it right, he can snag a bit of spare silver thread, wrapping its warmth momentarily around his fingers before it tangles back up with the rest of the dream threads.

The third or fourth time he tries to hold onto the embroidery, Killua catches his wrist. “Why are you so distracted by cloth?” he asks, eyebrows raised in amusement.

A little of the silver thread loops between their fingers and up the dark fabric of Killua’s gloves, tangling with the golden thread Gon brought with him. “I was wondering if I could make it myself,” he says. “So if you come to visit, I’d have something for you.”

Killua turns his head away abruptly, but not before Gon catches a dusting of pink on his cheeks. “You know I can’t.”

“You will someday, Killua—”

The dreamwalker picks up the pace across the cobbled streets, and Gon has to rush to keep up. “We don’t have time for this,” he says.

Gon wants to keep arguing—Killua visits him all the time in his dreams, so it can’t be that much harder to visit in real life—but Killua stops abruptly in a small square, and Gon’s boots nearly slip across the snow encrusted streets. The shadows are denser here, although they don’t seem to affect the soft lights from the lanterns or the buildings. Almost tangible, maybe, enough that an energy comes off of them as they brush past. A few of the silver swirls of embroidery reach towards the forms before fading away into the night.

Killua turns back to him, blue eyes shadowed. “This is the best chance we’ll get, if you still want to try,” he says quietly, as though expecting Gon to turn him down.

Instead, Gon grabs onto both of Killua’s hands, feeling the soft cloth against his bare skin and laughing as some of the embroidery tries to loop around his wrists and up his arms, like it says what Killua doesn’t want to. “Don’t let go, alright?”

The look of exasperation, of nerves, of glee—all of it together makes Killua look younger, almost childlike, like he’s never run off a cliff because it’s a dream and he can  _fly._ Maybe he couldn’t fly before, if he’s always been stuck in the rules of other people’s dreams. And in reality, flying takes powerful magic, built into ships or painted in permanent ink, anchored in laws Gon only sort of understands and has only rarely experienced. Even Gon’s own attempts at flight while awake had ended badly, with Aunt Mito angry and his whole body aching. But together…

Together, they can do anything.

So Gon tightens his grip on his best friend, and grabs the little bit of reality he has in this dream, that feeling of falling and jumping, willing it to push them up and up and  _up._ He can feel Killua jumping, the magic between their hands swirling out and around in a dizzying array, pulling at Gon’s hair and screaming in his ears.

He doesn’t realize it worked until he hears a joyful yell erupt, and he opens his eyes.

They are much higher up than Gon expected.

Stretched out beneath them, like a tapestry of golden stars against a pitch-black night, the city looks endless, glimmers of spiraling patterns of sparks. It’s a clear reflection of the sky above, where golden lights turn to silver, galaxies spinning with more life than any of the shadows down below could imagine. A pair of moons crest a distant ocean, turning the stars all the colors Gon has ever seen and sending wispy clouds dancing across the horizon.

And holding onto his hands, with his eyes catching all of the lights above and below, Killua is laughing. His cheeks redden with the altitude or the cold, joyful laughter bubbling out and into the wind, the only thing keeping him upright Gon’s hands on his. It pulls a laugh out of Gon, one that starts as a giggle and keeps building and building, until he’s fallen into Killua even though there’s nothing keeping them up.

It feels like the first time Gon did magic, the first time he made a dream into something concrete, something real. Which this really shouldn’t—if anything, it’s the opposite, reality made into a dream. But it feels…familiar, somehow, in how impossible it is.

Their laughter slowly dies out, drifting away from them and across the little pinpricks of light. Killua’s hair curls outwards, blown even messier than usual, and all Gon wants to do is run his fingers through the soft white strands, paler and more ethereal than the twin moons.

“This is ridiculous,” Killua says, words so breathless they’re nearly lost to the wind. “How did you know this would work?”

“I didn’t.”

Blue eyes widen sharply, and Killua tries to turn around, as though he can see strings holding them both up. “Then how are we—”

Gon kicks his feet against the thin air, the dreamscape blurring with his and Killua’s magic in a tangle of dizzy exhilaration. “I don’t know. I wanted to do this, and you wanted it too, so I…channeled it, only I guess I’m the rune and your thread is the material and you and the dream are the magic.”

“That makes no sense. This is  _impossible._ This is…” Killua laughs again, bright and alive, and Gon never wants to forget that sound, not ever. “This is nothing like I could have ever dreamed.”

If it were up to Gon, Killua would be able to dream whatever, whenever he wants. Killua’s hopes gnaw at Gon’s heart, but right now, drifting high above anything close to possible, the most important thing is that this worked. So Gon tilts his lips in a grin, one that makes Killua’s breath catch in his throat. “You’re the amazing one, Killua! I never could have done this with by myself. And I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else.”

Usually, saying something like this would make Killua stammer and blush. Once he’d even left the dream entirely, leaving Gon unable to stop giggling even when he woke up. Other times, less often now than when the dreamwalker first dropped into his dreams, Killua responds with overconfidence, pride in what he’s good at and no real acceptance of a damn compliment. Those times frustrate Gon, as he isn’t sure what he’s done wrong that Killua will pretend to be someone else in front of him.

But Killua does neither of these. Instead, he looks at Gon, sharp eyes gone soft and brilliantly, blindingly blue.

And then he kisses Gon.

He kisses Gon, floating in endless arrays of stars, and it’s all Gon can do to kiss him  _back._ Killua’s lips are so gentle that Gon forgets how to breathe. His free hand drifts up pale cheeks and into impossibly soft white curls, reassuring him that this is happening as much as the kiss itself. Maybe Gon presses back a little too hard, determined to memorize every spark in his blood, but Killua matches him with equal fire. Even if this is a dream, it’s  _real,_ more real than being awake, and Killua is his as much as he is Killua’s.

Killua is still smiling when they pull apart, eyes closed and expression beautifully relaxed. It takes Gon a moment to realize that the golden lights have drifted overhead, stars at his feet and city overhead. Killua’s curls drift downwards, tangling in the clouds around them. Everything is quiet, like a bubble made of glass, where the only things that matter are Killua and the lights illuminating his face and the faintly glowing threads that wind between their fingers from Killua’s gloves to Gon’s wrist and back again. His best friend’s grip weighs heavily on his own, but Gon doesn’t mind.

Gon leans his forehead against his friend’s, skin tingling. “Killua?” he asks, the name catching on his tongue sweet and delicate like pashmak. His friend’s smile grows wider, and Gon leans in again.

But the moment’s shattered before he can do anything more. Killua mutters something Gon doesn’t catch, expression going shuttered and dim. It’s the only warning before Killua pulls back, tugging his hands away fast enough that both of his gloves come off. The silver and gold thread holding them together snaps with a sharp pop, silver runes fading away completely and replaced by empty blank holes, staring down at Killua with gaping maws of bitter nothing. Gon abruptly feels cold and helpless and alone.

“I can’t,” Killua says, and vanishes into the black.

And Gon falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm an absolute fool and screwed up basically everything getting this chapter out, up to and including it actually being published properly. come yell at me on [tumblr](xyliane.tumblr.com) for more.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **XXVIII**  
>  _With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,_  
>  _And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;_  
>  _And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd--_  
>  _"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."_  
>  \--The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam (1120, trans. Edward FitzGerald 1889)

When Gon was young, before he had heard of Masadora or read about the empires beyond Whale Island’s beaches, he thought the world was made of magic. Magic, because Aunt Mito could make impossible things happen with threads from her dreams and by stubborn determination. Magic, because the runes Elder Nui tattooed into her skin kept her hands nimble and loom strong. Magic, because sometimes when he dreamed of the things he had done or things that he wanted, he could make those things appear in his own hands. The memories are blurry now, long since used for spells or forgotten to time. But what’s still there, Gon treasures.

It was little things at first: A taro candy, like the ones that Pata offered in exchange for the biggest fish Gon could catch. A bucket of fresh water, rather than walking down the hill to the well. Once, a spool of bright green thread, to pretend he hadn’t used the original to try to tie a branch back into a tree. Anything he could get away with, just as long as he could do magic. Flying seemed like everything, because if he could fly like airships or like birds, he could leave and explore and find Ging, who no one would tell him anything about. Maybe Ging would be proud that Gon could fly, or maybe he’d have another adventure for Gon to go on. Either way, it would be something new and exciting.

But when he’d tried to fly, doing his best to manifest the same feeling of wind and freedom he’d known while dreaming, all Gon learned was that falling really, really hurt. And the only thing that hurt worse than falling was how sad it made his mom.

At the time, he’d been terrified Aunt Mito would never let him do magic again. She wanted him to learn about worldbinding, sending him to long and boring sessions with Elder Nui and the rare scholars stuck in port during the rainy season or unexpected storms. But all that had taught him was how to fall asleep quickly, to dream and store up memories for the next attempt. Later, he’d regret not learning more. At the time, all he could think of was that he wouldn’t know how to do magic  _ ever. _

Instead, Aunt Mito had shown Gon how to filter his memories, to make them into things that they weren’t and store them in air and in liquid, to transform them from a bauble and into something useful. She’d shown him again and again, how important it is to understand his own dreams, how to shape them and use them in ways that runes or words can never really explain. There’s more to the world, she taught him, than just what they could see and smell and feel—there are threads weaving everything together, like the patterns on mats or the embroidery on the foreigner’s clothing. By working with their own dreams, they could change even those little bits of power, capture it for themselves or for someone else. She and Gran and everyone else on the island had encouraged Gon to be curious and creative, to learn more about his dreams and his magic, even if they pulled him back from flying.

Gon hasn’t tried flying again, not outside of dreams or airships. Maybe it wasn’t so much that Gon wanted to fly. Maybe he just wanted to go somewhere new, do something exciting and different, an itch to move towards some horizon he couldn’t see. And flying was all of that, wrapped up in impossible magic.

* * *

Gon is falling, and nothing makes sense.

Falling in dreams is a thing of nightmares, of times when the reality expected is out of sync with the dream given. Gon hasn’t truly fallen in his own dreams since he was a child learning to shape and control his dreams, able to easily recognize the ensuing vertigo and correct it into flight with barely a thought. Flying in his own dreams takes barely a breath of will, to the point that aimlessly falling is harder than the swooping, soaring feeling he gets from flying on his own terms.

But Gon’s not in his own dreams. He’s lost somewhere else, in a dream that doesn’t respond to his thoughts or feelings, where every time he reaches out for stability—warmth, a hand, Killua’s steady presence—there’s instead nothing but empty air. Even his own memories won’t come, stuck firmly inside his own head and refusing to budge. What he’d brought with him is long gone, shattered and split when Killua vanished.

The longer he falls, unable to reorient himself enough to slow down or even see where he’s going, the colder the air gets. It seeps through his skin and whips at his eyes as he tries to grab a cloud or a passing star or  _ anything, _ blending the strange sky and the gold-lit city together until they’re nothing but a mess of shadows and streaks of light. It’s as though he’s going to fall forever, never reaching a messy splattering end but always terrified of it, tumbling head over foot and never able to stop no matter how hard he tries. Maybe this is how Killua feels all the time, unable to do anything but whatever the dreamer’s rules let him do until he can steal a memory, take something of someone else’s and turn it into anything that lets him move for another day.

The glass-enclosed fire pendant whips up and smacks him in the face, leaving a shock of warmth. Gon can’t decide if this is better or worse than the explosion, the last time he and Killua had been separated in another person’s dream. At least then, Killua had been with him, hadn’t left him alone.

_ The pendant. _

Gon pulls his arms inward and tugs the flame off his neck. Despite the incessant spinning, the gemstone stays in his hand, thin silver chain lazily drifting with the enthusiasm of an elderly cat sunbathing next to a window. In contrast, the glass stone throbs with a furious heartbeat, the dream demanding to be let out of its prison, to explode back to life as the well of energy it is supposed to be. By condensing it down to the smallest possible size, that energy has only intensified, and Gon wonders for the first time what would have happened if it had burst while he was wearing it.

Or what will happen when he opens it up again.

He shoves those worries aside. If he doesn’t stop falling, it won’t matter. He traces the seam of the gem from the silvery chain, trying to look for a loose thread in the gem, something he or Killua left as a blemish or a flaw. But there’s nothing, just multiple facets of opalescent glass gleaming with poorly-contained flame. He can’t even make out the contents of the dream inside, nothing about the boy or the destruction of Whale Island except for the pulsing warmth inside the stone.

There has to be something, anything. He can’t stay here forever, until the dreamer wakes up and…and then what? Gon curses, tears prickling at his eyes and the stone digging into his palms sharp enough to draw blood. The little droplets spin up and out, a few smacking into Gon’s cheek before falling up or down or in whichever direction he’s supposed to be going. A few of them melt into the stone, mixing with the old dried-up blood from when Gon and Killua had made it out of their dreams and their will weeks ago.

A tiny crack appears, barely enough to let more heat through. But it’s enough.

Gon takes a deep breath to brace himself as best as possible, and smashes his hands together.

Fire plumes up from the shattered glass stone, shards digging into Gon’s palms beneath the ferocious heat. In his own dreams, where he can control air temperature and humidity and even his own breath, Gon would have a hard time controlling this. Here, spinning out of control and unable to figure out if up is down, all he has is pure hard-headed stubbornness to will the flame into what he wants. It’s not his dream. It doesn’t want to do anything other than flourish and spread and burn. And Gon won’t let that happen.

Gon screams in defiance, and buries his arm in the fire as deep as it goes.

However much the glass shards hurt, the burning is infinitely worse. He can feel his skin blister and pop and peel away beneath the flame, and it’s hard to even think around the pain. There’s nothing more that he wants than to stop it, to let go, to go back to falling as long as it doesn’t  _ hurt _ anymore.

But he holds on, staring down the fire until it retreats from its explosive plume back to his skin, then to his hands, leaving behind a string of golden threads that loop loosely around his burnt skin like a terribly useless bandage. Leaving the fire in his bad hand, where it’s mostly stopped hurting—whether from the nerves being burnt away or the fire being restrained, Gon doesn’t want to figure out—he grabs a handful of the gleaming threads and loops them in the air in a terrible mockery of the runes Killua draws with ease and grace. He tries to scrawl  _ open _ and  _ back _ and  _ contact, _ whatever he can think of opening a portal back to his own dreams. Something solid opens up out of the sky right under Gon’s hand, and he latches onto it by the tips of his ruined fingers.

It’s not a portal, though. Gon hangs in the sky like one of the moons, a memory of fire in his maimed arm and his other one curled around golden threads that dangle precipitously. He wishes he’d paid more attention to anyone who’d taught him runes—to Elder Nui, to Leorio, to Killua. He wishes he could work magic even when he wasn’t in someone else’s dream. Mostly, he wishes Killua were here, because with Killua, it’s easy to think anything can happen.

But he remembers the blank expression on his best friend’s face just before he’d vanished, and Gon wonders if he’ll ever even see the real Killua again.

The thought makes the rune for  _ contact _ unravel, and he tips precariously back towards the glittering golden city. He grits his teeth and snags another thread from his arm, hoping that the next rune is better, enough to open a portal and send him home. Or even just send him to somewhere he won’t spend the rest of the dream falling. Maybe even open the path to Killua, to wherever he’d gone.

Instead, he writes what he hopes is  _ home, _ scribbled against the night sky in the burning loops of Whale Island’s runes. And when the marks blossom with sunlight as it rips through the dream, a dark-skinned hand so much like Gon’s own reaches out and pulls him through.

Gon’s throat hurts as he wakes up. He’s not wholly sure why that is what he first notices, when his arm still feels as though it is on fire—everywhere except for his palm, which tingles like it’s merely been out in the sun for too long. It’s an odd sensation, like his body can’t decide if it wants to hurt or not and decides it might as well do both.

“He’s awake!” someone blurts from right next to him, and Gon winces at the sound. But the wince makes his arm move, which makes him bite down on a scream. It hurts it hurts  _ it hurts— _

A freezing cold hand presses against his forehead, and the same voice says at a much softer level, “Hey, buddy. Gon? You with us? You were out for a really long time.”

He blinks vacantly at Leorio. “I’m…”

The door slams open, and Aunt Mito stumbles through, a haunted look in her green eyes and knots of frayed bright green thread tangled around her fingers. Runes are scrawled across her bare arms in Leorio’s black ink, and what skin isn’t covered by ink is blistered and peeling from burns. She starts to snap something at the doctor or her son, but seems to think the better of it. Or maybe she’s just exhausted. Instead, she drops into Gon’s desk chair, using one of the clean rags he keeps for polishing bottles to carefully wipe off the ink. 

“Where’s Ging?” Gon asks, and Mito flinches so badly she nearly falls off the chair.

Leorio blinks in confusion. “Who’s Ging?” he asks.

“He’s—” Gon pauses, glancing once at his mom. She doesn’t meet his eyes. “He’s my dad. I was looking for him in dreams, but I thought he was…”

The doctor follows Gon’s gaze to Mito, and he sighs. “Your mom’s the one who figured out what was going on,” he says, voice soft. “As soon as you started screaming, while the rest of us were arguing like Capital peacocks dividing up gold coins, she took one of those dream-shaping potions and passed out next to you. But then she…”

Mito shifts to hide the thread-shaped burns on her skin, glaring weakly at Leorio like she’s demanding he shut up or face the consequences. Leorio muffles a small smile, but drops whatever it is he was going to say.

“Palm’s out finding something for both of you to eat and aloe for the rune burns,” Leorio says, accent slipping from Capital educated to rolling edges even as he keeps a professional tone of voice. “In the meantime, Gon, I’m going to look you over. This is an old trick a friend of mine taught me after spending too much time dreaming. Tell me if this hurts.”

He presses a cold piece of metal against Gon’s head, then stomach. But when he gently taps against Gon’s right arm, the metal turns bright red and Gon can’t feel anything but impossible levels of pain. Even the lightest touch is too much, and he can’t do much more than gasp until the pain has passed. When it does, Gon risks a look at the skin, expecting…something, anything like the blackening layers or golden threads that had been in his dream. His arm doesn’t have a single burn on it, although it feels almost boiling hot to the touch. Leorio frowns deeply. “That’s not an injury from your own mind. How long have you been dreamwalking?”

Mito stares at Gon with unreadable green eyes, her mouth drawn thin. “A few months,” Gon says. “But how—?”

“I’m not much of a specialist in dream-manifest injuries, but I spent too long living with idiots in the Capital to not figure something out. Anyways, Miss Mito’s the one who put the pieces together.” He makes a note of something in his book before unspooling a long soft bandage, tiny runes inscribed in blue ink along the edges. “I’m going to wrap your arm with this. It won’t stop the pain, but it should make it easier to ignore.”

Gon ends up biting down on a thick piece of fabric as Leorio gently wraps his arm, burning sensation slowly fading away as though wrapped in gauze. The pain is still there when the bandage is done with his arm is bent and pressed against his chest, but once immobilized Gon can almost forget it’s there it if he tries.

Leorio gives him a once-over, nodding to himself. “I’m going to send a carrier to the Capital,” he tells Gon and Mito. “My teacher’s the best of the best at what she does, and she’ll know someone who can help.”

“We’re in your debt,” Aunt Mito says. It’s the first words Gon’s heard from her since waking up, and he hates how every single one of them drips with quiet misery. Misery that’s  _ his _ fault.

Leorio shakes his head. “You’ve put me up for the better part of a season, Miss Mito, and all I’ve had to do is a little cleaning. I’m getting out ahead in this.” He glances between the two Freecsses, and his expression turns gentle. “I have a lot of reckless little siblings, and I know what it means to lose one. I’m glad you’re not another one we don’t get back, Gon.”

Before anyone can muster a reply, Leorio vanishes down the stairs, muttering about carrier fees and rubbing the tears out of his eyes.

It’s quiet in Gon’s room. Even the normal cacophony of the docks or of the streets of Masadora seem muffled and far away, leaving only deep uncomfortable stillness.

“How did you learn to dreamwalk?”

The words are quiet, but they hit like a slap to the face. Gon says, “My friend. He’s been teaching me a little.” Enough to leave him behind.

Gon can hear the scowl on her face. “He’s a shitty teacher.”

“No! He isn’t—” Gon cuts himself off, not sure what Killua is or isn’t other than  _ absolutely not shitty. _ “This wasn’t his fault.”

“Then I have to thank him for you being alive and not a piece of human coral.” She barks a short, brittle laugh utterly empty of her normal humor. “I need a fucking drink.”

Gon is silent, unsure of what to do or say. If there is anything he can. But as the moments stretch out into minutes, the silence settles over them in blocks of molasses, leaving everything sticky and gross. There isn’t even a breeze from outside, although it’s hard to tell if that’s magic or timing. Whatever it is, it’s hard to think of what to do, other than that he has to figure out what he did wrong, what he could have done that Killua ran from.

Aunt Mito opens a little glass vial with a pop. She walks over to Gon’s sleeping mats and leans against the wall, leaving enough room for him to stay comfortable on his pillows. The vial smells like cinnamon and sea salt, an odd combination that some of Aunt Mito’s personal potions end up having. She ties one of the spare cloths around her upper arm and loops it with a spool of green thread, knotted in a strange-looking pattern that she wraps around her wrist. “It’s a dream draught,” she says by way of explanation. “I have something to show you.”

Gon almost doesn’t want to, stubbornness warring with curiosity. But the vial passes under his nose, and he takes a deep breath.

The port in his dreams is almost entirely empty. It’s still Masadora, if all of the ships and the people and the buildings were removed, leaving nothing but well-used piers and empty sand. The fire that had been captured inside of Killua’s glass gemstone has shrunk back to palm-sized, and it sits on the side of the ocean as though baiting the waves to dowse it. Gon scoops it up with his uninjured hand, refusing to let it get into any more trouble. It’s done enough. At the end of one of the big piers, Aunt Mito steps into his dream through glimmering emerald moss, her loose overrobe flapping against her legs and tied with a broad brocade sash, like something Palm would have made. She motions Gon over as she pulls a little satchel out of her sash.

“I’ve never been good with runes,” she tells Gon as she strings together another series of knots in the thick green thread. “Ging was always the genius with those, wandering off whenever and wherever he wanted whether he was asleep or awake. But he never cared much for dream shaping, either, so he can’t do what we can. Ours is powerful magic, more than most people give it credit. His magic just looked more impressive.”

Gon nods, unsure of what to say. It’s the most positive thing he can remember Aunt Mito ever saying about his dad, other than that he left in the first place.

She loops a strand in a spiral, leaving a small circle of moss and vines hanging in the air. But rather than wrap a memory thread around Gon or ask for one of his dreams, she simply holds out a hand for the little flame. It hops out of Gon’s grasp, landing nimbly on her shoulder before bouncing up and sinking into her head. She twitches, eyes fluttering, and her red hair busts into flames. It curls past her chin, little embers tumbling off the ends and casting shadows across the open water. But before it can expand any further, she closes off a knot in her string, and her hair settles back to normal.

Gon gapes openly, and she laughs a little in embarrassment, freckles deepening against her brown skin. “It’s only a dream,” she says to him. “One that’s mostly used up, by now.”

“It’s yours?” Gon says. “But you’re not there.”

A strange, sad smile plays at her lips. “That was the point,” she says. “Do you remember how to enter someone else’s dreams?”

“I can’t remember what I never knew,” Gon says bitterly. Killua was the one who knew, Killua was the one who trusted Gon enough to at least try to help.

“And you were looking for Ging,” she says with a sigh. Carefully moving around his injured arm, still bound tight with Leorio’s bandages even in the dream, she positions him in front of the mossy space, the portal half-opened already. She hands a piece of green thread to him, knots already tangled across its short length. “Tie it around your wrist, and unknot the third knot, then the seventh, and then the first.”

Gon does as she says, and the air splits in front of them. “You don’t need a memory, too?” he asks.

“I don’t need one to go into my own nightmares,” she says. She waves the cloth she’d tied around her arm before they’d fallen asleep. A pair of black runes float off the fabric to outline the portal, little green strings knotted around the bold edges. “Come here, Gon.”

They end up on that same Whale Island dreamscape he and Killua had stepped onto weeks ago, pebbled beach smooth and ocean impossibly still. The young version of himself, still barefoot and still carrying a little fire, sprints past them up the path towards Aunt Mito’s house. She makes a choked noise, deep in her chest. The little boy pauses at the sight of them, waving cheerily at Aunt Mito before scampering away. Rather than say anything, she motions Gon down the beach and towards the open clearing with the forge. 

It appears out of the trees in front of them within a few steps, revealing the Whale Islanders Gon remembers from when he and Killua had gone into the memory—no longer wandering aimlessly but actively engaged in work at the smithy, Poka laughing soundlessly at something Lana says. New are a trio of foreigners clustered around the entrance to the tavern. Both the women and the man wear long overcoats Gon recognizes now as Imperial fashion, layers upon layers of dissonant fabric that clashes in pattern and sound. In the center of them, a familiar smile on her young face and a mischievous gleam in her green eyes, is a Mito who can’t be older than Gon is himself. Her coarse red hair is cropped short, barely long enough to cover her ears. If spiked, it would look almost exactly like Gon’s does now. One of the foreign women curls a strand around her finger as though wondering if it could lengthen, and the young Mito grins widely, sunlight sinking into her skin and making her eyes dance.

His Aunt Mito notices what he’s watching and snorts. “They wanted a discount on drinks, and I was an idiot teenager,” she says.

“Is this your memory or mine?” Gon asks.

“A little of both,” she starts to say, before child-Gon bursts out of the forest, a wide toothy smile on his face and a rainbow of fire billowing out of his hands. The teenaged Mito looks briefly annoyed, then astonished, then horrified, as Gon keeps running towards her, calling her name in louder and louder tones. As he does, the flame expands out from his hands towards his nose, and he halts, expression shifting from glee to sudden terror. He starts to scream.

But before the flame explodes, Mito shoves past the foreigners and the Whale Islanders and clasps her hands directly over the flame. It fights back, escaping through the gaps in her fingers, but she shoves it back towards Gon’s palms with only a piece of green thread and sheer stubborn determination. What had been an uncontrollable maelstrom drops to the ground as a tiny ember, and she steps on it with her bare foot to put it out. She winces visibly as the flame vanishes, taking with it whatever memory it had been and leaving behind only burns across her palms.

Child Gon’s eyes wobble, tears bubbling down his cheeks.  _ I’m sorry, _ he says soundlessly.  _ I didn’t mean to. _

She kneels in front of him, mouth pulled tight.  _ You can’t take things from other people’s dreams, _ she says.  _ Not even mine. _

_ I wanted you to have it, _ he says.  _ I thought you would like it. _

She tightly cups his hands, tiny copies of her own.  _ What if I wasn’t here and you couldn’t control the flame? What if the island burned down? What if you fell asleep and couldn’t come back? What if— _

_ I’m sorry, _ he says again, quieter.

_ Promise me you won’t do that again, _ she says. When Gon doesn’t respond, Mito holds out her pinkie, waiting for him to link his.  _ Gon. Promise me. _

_ I promise, _ he says, soundless voice trembling. As he does, a little golden thread loops between their hands, tangling with the green in Mito’s.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gon says, words brittle.

Aunt Mito droops, her red hair sullen and colorless against the endless Whale Island sky. There’s no energy in her, not even to argue. “I don’t know how your friend dreamwalks, but the way our family has always done it is through our own memories of the people we know or came into contact with. It has to be powerful enough on its own to cross dreamscapes. But when we do, it works like any other magic. The memory gets used up, and there’s no getting it back.”

Gon watches as the child version of himself is hugged by a younger Mito, tears in her green eyes and a stubborn set to her chin. “What about Ging?” he asks. “Did you ever try to find him?”

She grimaces. “Of course I did. I used…I don’t know what memory, I suppose, or how many. It must have been incredibly strong, to get through the blocks Ging puts on his dreams. I can’t even remember what I told him, or where he was. But I wish I hadn’t gone. It wasn’t worth the effort or the memories.”

“I don’t have any memories of Ging. I can’t try at all,” Gon says. Aunt Mito shudders visibly, and Gon can’t bring himself to care.

Another Mito, barely older than the one hugging Gon in the circle of ash, walks down the path from the jungle. Her hair’s longer, enough that it curls around her ears as the edges turn to flames. She gathers a few of the flames into her hand and loops them with green string, as though stringing closed a little bag, and hands them over to a tall man with long white hair and deep-set eyes hidden by a poofy hat. As she does, her hair settles back to its normal length, no longer burning away at the edges.

“Who’s that?” Gon asks.

“A…friend of Ging’s, I guess. I don’t remember.” At Gon’s look, she flips her hands in a helpless little gesture, one Palm makes sometimes and usually while she’s holding knives. “He promised he’d get rid of the nightmares. Repetitive dreams make powerful magic, even the worst ones. He helped me take apart your memories and mine, so you wouldn’t remember and I wouldn’t dream about it anymore. In exchange, I had to give him a direction to look for Ging and a memory to power the magic. So I gave the man my memory of his name, and my memory of wherever it was that Ging went. It did the trick. Even if you told me who he was or where Ging went, I won’t remember.”

The man crouches down in front of the child Gon, who’d disentangled himself from Mito’s arms to reach curiously for the man’s sheets of white hair. A small smile spreads across his face as he says something, and Gon drops a ball of gleaming golden thread into his hands. He looks askance at Mito, who responds by scooping Gon into her arms and walking away, heartbreak written into lines too deep for her young face.

Gon waves back at the man, who tips his hat and vanishes back into a portal.

“His name’s Kite,” Gon hears himself say. “I gave him a dream. But I don’t know…”

Aunt Mito sighs deeply. “You can’t remember because you gave him your memories of dreamwalking,” she says. “The first time you dreamwalked, you couldn’t have been more than five or six. Even Ging didn’t start that young, at least from what Gran told me. But you hopped right out of your dreams and into mine, no runes or arcane symbols or training. Just your own memories, no matter that you lost them, as long as you got to someone important. I only wanted you to stop taking things from other people’s memories, but you gave up all your time spent in my dreams, everything you ever learned. Just because he knew Ging.”

“Maybe he could have helped me,” Gon says.

With that, the dream fades away to mist, knots in the string around Gon’s wrist fraying and disintegrating. Rather than hand him another memory, Aunt Mito simply places a strong reassuring hand on his shoulder, guiding them both into the ocean. As the waters recede, the empty ports of Masadora replace Whale Island, and Gon can feel the world responding to his will without even trying. It should be unsettling how easily Aunt Mito moved them back to his dreams. But Gon can just barely make out Whale Island on the horizon, a bright spot of the past that isn’t fading away.

“Maybe. But maybe not.” Aunt Mito’s voice fades a little, the green threads in her hands flickering like a dying candle. “But Ging left, and he never came back. You have other options here, ones that don’t involve dreamwalking or vanishing to the other side of the ocean.”

Here, in Masadora. Here, staying in port without ever leaving. Here, stuck in his own dreams, unable to look for the things he most wants.

Here, without Killua.

“I need to find my friend,” he says. “I need to make sure he’s safe.”

Aunt Mito frowns. “Are you sure? He might have woken up on accident, or gone back to his own dreams.”

“He wouldn’t,” Gon says. Because Killua wouldn’t leave, not like this. All he knows is Killua is impossibly far away, and Gon refuses to believe he will never see his best friend again. If he can’t, then what’s the point of dreamwalking at all?

Some of the waves splash up over the pier, threatening to soak through Aunt Mito’s skirts. “Then do you know where he is? Or how you’ll find him? How many memories you’ll have to give up before you find even an inkling of the right way to go?”

“I don’t know,” Gon bites off, fists clenched so tightly blunt fingernails dig into his palms. The sky overhead turns a steely gray, and the winds whip whitecaps out of the ocean.

She crosses her arms over her chest, eyes hard. “Then how do you expect to come back? Or will you leave and forget everything about your life? About your home—”

“I don’t know!” Gon snaps, loud enough that the words howl across the ocean in a storm, lightning splitting the dark clouds and landing in the ocean. A massive wave erupts over the waters, blackening out the gray light in a wall of water as tall as the sky. It rushes towards them, drawn towards the shoreline in a fury he can feel all the way through his bones. Aunt Mito reacts instinctively, a bright green string appearing in her fingers and knotting in the air just before the gale hits. Her hair flickers with flame, dancing across her surprised face in bright flashes of green and red light, as the waves fall harmlessly around them.

“Gon—” she says, but he isn’t listening.

“I don’t know,” Gon repeats, voice quieter but echoing across the empty ocean. “I’m going to find him. Even if you won’t help.”

She makes an aborted movement to reach for him, but Gon steps back. She settles for dropping it back to her side, brushing nonexistent dust off her skirts. “Not every dream is the right one, Gon. Take it from someone who made a very stupid decision at your age.”

Gon doesn’t respond. Rather than keep pushing, she runs a hand through her hair, the remnants of the emerald green knots sparking against her bright red hair. “I have to wake up,” she says. “Think about it, Gon. It’s up to you.”

With that, she falls away into the winds, vanishing with a sigh.

The water beneath the pier splashes against Gon’s bare feet, bitterly cold against his skin. But he barely notices. Maybe Aunt Mito’s right. Maybe Killua simply woke up, wherever it is that he sleeps. But that doesn’t feel right. None of this does—not Aunt Mito keeping his memories from him, not Killua vanishing with no warning, not how impossibly  _ lonely _ his own dreams feel without his best friend in them.

“I’m going to find Killua,” Gon says to the ocean, and the whole dreamscape narrows around him. Aunt Mito said that dreamwalkers need a memory that ties them to wherever they want to go. Something strong, or vivid—a memory with so much power that it can’t help but connect people’s dreams together. It has to be important, even if it’s something Gon is giving up.

What if Ging gives up everything to continue dreamwalking? How many people has he met and forgotten? Does it even matter to him? It has to, if his memories are strong enough to carry him between dreams.

Gon can’t think about that, not now. Masadora and Whale Island fade away, as do the boats and airships dotting the harbor. Even the sound of waves becomes muffled, impossible to hear over Gon’s pulse thumping in his ears. His bad arm throbs painfully from where it’s been tied against his chest, but Gon does his best to shove that away as well. Anything to focus, so Gon can find a memory that will bring him to wherever Killua is.

The memory of the nighttime city with the living shadows spills into Gon’s palms before he recognizes what it is. It’s not only the memory of Killua’s lips on his either, or only the cold of the city and the giddy elation of  _ flying.  _ The memory feeds off of other ones, little moments where Killua’s smile would soften or he’d start to say something but wouldn’t, all of them curling together in a golden thread. It’s just barely long enough to wrap around his wrist twice—almost not long enough. But Gon has to focus, deliberate in making sure that all it takes is their time in the city and the sparkling skies above _. _ Because if it takes more than that, he’ll forget Killua ever vanished in the first place.

His heart wrenches as he snips off the string, even as he forgets why it hurts. Whatever the memory is, it’s important enough to guide him back to his best friend.

Gon doesn’t know what rune will work, not for this. He barely knows any runes for dreamwalking, and the ones that had saved him from the nighttime city don’t seem like the right choice. He doesn’t even know how Killua writes his own name, in the angular runes that don’t match any language Gon knows. But Gon doesn’t need that. He just needs to have that connection between them, the way through—and he has a feeling that, whatever he chooses, it’ll take him where he needs to go.

The thread flares in his hand as he traces the Whale Island rune for  _ friend, _ gray sky pulsing with golden light. And Gon steps off the pier, trusting the air to catch him.

He lands in knee-high snow, frozen air piercing his bare arms and numbing his toes. The phantom injuries on his arm burn sharply for a long moment before receding back to a low simmer of pain. It’s bitterly cold, so much that Gon wishes he still had the pendant of Aunt Mito’s memory to keep him warm. But Killua has to bear this cold all alone if he dreams. Gon can manage.

Gon has never seen so much snow. It wafts off the mountains that hover far above, reaching towards the ground like massive stalactites, off of a moon hovering just above the clouds. They cast the ground in purpling shadows, pale starlight filtering through the shorter mountains to streak the dreamscape in an endless twilight. Shadows in the shape of massive pines form a boundary at the horizon, where the snow on the ground starts to float back up towards the mountains in the sky. And between it all are diamond birds with sapphire eyes, frozen statues caught in the air without being able to go anywhere new. When Gon reaches for the nearest, its head turns sharply, beak going from shut to open as though one statue had been replaced with another.

Killua has to be here. Somewhere. But Killua’s a dreamwalker, he has to know when someone else is in his dreams, right? So why isn’t he…

“Killua!” Gon bellows, as loud as he can.  _ “Killua!”  _ His voice echoes off the mountains, ringing back across the snow.  _ Killuakilluakilluaaaa _

Gon waits until the sound of his best friend’s name fades back to the quiet of fresh snowfall. All he gets for it is shivers. The whole dreamscape is empty of movement except for the gentle puffs of snowfall, breeze pulling it in every direction. Killua must be so cold, wherever he is that he can’t hear Gon’s voice.

Gon’s taking another deep breath of lung-searing air when the snow freezes in the middle of the air. The gemstone birds above abruptly take flight, feathers clashing against each other and making light flash across the snow, which swarms out from beneath Gon’s feet and into a human shape, stretching and darkening into solid form made of long limbs and sharp angles. Sleek black trousers and black collared shirt contrast starkly with the white landscape. Too-pale skin—cheeks, nose, hands, neck— is covered in a patchwork of interlocking snowflakes. His white hair is made of ice, stuck permanently in neat crystalline curls, and when his eyes open, blue replaced with black ice, his long lashes are frosted over as well.

A blank-eyed Killua stares down at him curiously. No, not curiously—Killua’s curiosity involves wicked grins and pointed laughter, studying a thing because it’s fascinating and because he wants to. Killua loves finding new things and trying out new ideas, going along with all of Gon’s ideas just to see what will happen. Even when he pretends to not care, or finds something not interesting, he gives it a chance to surprise him. This Killua stares at Gon without emotion, passing judgment without caring at all what a stranger is doing in his dreams.

Killua tilts his head, and a few of his curls crumble off into the snow. “This is unexpected.”

“You’re not Killua,” Gon says.

The thing in the shape of his best friend doesn’t pay attention, tapping sharp nails against the back of his other hand. Black marks streak down pale skin and across the white snow, staining it in the shape of jagged runes and numbers. “Kil must be falling asleep again,” he says to himself. Killua’s voice comes out fractured, not lining up with the movements of his mouth. “The dreamscape is too cohesive. What is Mom doing?”

“Hey!” Gon says, fury burning in his chest. His good hand latches onto Killua’s wrist, and a shockwave of cold lances up from the icy skin. But Gon holds on, his palms burning with frostbite. “Where is Killua?”

The dreamwalker blinks down at him, blue eyes blank. “And we’ll have to talk to him about bringing back trinkets from missions. It’s leading to clutter.”

Before Gon can respond, the black lines in the snow wrap around him and pull taut, dragging him away from Killua. The edges poke and prod at his skin in needle-sharp points, leaving pinpricks of black as they crawl up his arms and over his chest like a weaver attempting to undo an error in their cloth. But on instinct, Gon twists his wrist like Aunt Mito had on the pier of his dreamscape, and the memory thread flares in a shield around him. The ink retreats in surprise, hovering just out of the range of Gon’s circle of melted snow. The thread on his wrist frays warningly.

“I’m not clutter,” Gon says. The cold air burns fiercely in his lungs, even with the warmth of his memory covering his arm like a glove. “And you’re not Killua.”

“Oh,” the fake Killua says, icy eyebrows crackling as they rise. “A dreamwalker. I suppose that makes sense, with how Kil has been so inefficient lately. Did you make some sort of bargain? I’m afraid that contract will be null and void without family approval.”

Gon snarls a curse. This fake, this monster pretending to be Killua, has no  _ right _ to talk about his best friend like he’s a tool to be used, a hound that can be trained. “He doesn’t need your approval to be my friend.”

“I am his brother Illumi. He’s mentioned me, of course, if you’ve known him. Kil will agree, it’s best if he simply forgets all of this and gets back to work. That’s why we’re in the process of restraining his memories once again. He’s more useful to all of us that way.”

Without thinking, Gon steps through the barrier he’d made, golden warmth coalescing down his arm and into his fist, and he punches the fake in the face. His head snaps back with the sound of breaking glass, crystalline skin cracking across his cheek and nose. Black ink leaks out between the cracks, weaving together the shattered pieces of his face with thick lines. The shock of the hit reverberates up Gon’s arm as though he’d punched a gong, each shockwave making the thread on his wrist flash with light.

Illumi blinks in surprise, and one of his eyelids cracks off entirely. 

“Give Killua his memories back,” Gon says, and pulls back his arm for another hit.

The dreamwalker moves impossibly fast. Before Gon can blink, he latches a hand onto Gon’s forearm, skin freezing where Killua’s always warm and soft to the touch. 

“This won’t do,” the dreamwalker says, needle-sharp fingernails tapping a rhythm against Gon’s pulse. Points of black pop up like freckles wherever his nails hit, sending little sparks of pain skittering across Gon’s skin. Gon tries to wrench his arm away, but his feet slip against the snowdrifts, his injured arm bound and useless against his chest. Killua’s hand holds him firmer than a blacksmith’s vice. “You can’t remember you were ever here.”

Killua has always had sharp fingernails. They’d been useful for snipping string or tying thread, or tearing apart useless pieces of parchment and rune-covered fabric whenever Killua got annoyed. But he’d never, ever used them against Gon. Now made of ice and ink, Killua’s fingernails dig into Gon’s skin and under his veins, drawing out not blood but thick golden threads. Gon’s head throbs with each pulse, memories slipping away before he can even think about them. He barely notices how they fade into dull colorless lengths as they fall away into the snow, no sense of which memories or which dreams he’s forgetting as Killua’s brother tugs them emotionlessly from his skin. Gon can’t get free, can’t draw his arm back, can barely think around the agony digging around inside his head, memories of Killua vanishing before he has time to even wonder what they had been.

It’s too much. He can’t lose Killua, not now. He can’t—He  _ won’t— _

So Gon reels back and headbutts the dreamwalker as hard as he can.

The fake Killua blinks in shock. Then he shatters, broken into a thousand pieces of ice that scatter into the wind. Gon barely catches himself with a heavy footstep. But his legs feel like watery jelly, and he drops facefirst into snow.

Gon’s not sure how long he lays there, snowflakes drifting gently out of the sky and tickling his nose. His head aches around the sudden holes in his mind, uneven gashes where memories abruptly cut off or begin in the middle, turning what he knows about his best friend into a piece of broken glass. Gon can’t remember Killua’s favorite food anymore, he realizes, even if he can remember the delight in his best friend’s blue eyes when presented with it. What else was taken? He can’t forget his best friend, not after all this.

Gon only realizes he’s crying when the tears freeze on his face, going from hot to cold in an instant. But he’s too tired, to wrung out to even try to wipe them away. He  _ knows _ Killua is here, he has to be.

But what can Gon even do, if Killua’s locked away? 

_ “Wake up, starblind,” _ Killua’s voice whispers in his ear, and a cold breeze tugs like tiny fingers at Gon’s shirt.

Gon takes a deep breath and pushes himself onto his hands and knees. The snow crinkles between his fingers, shimmering with dark light as though the shadows themselves are alive that circle a patch of odd snow. It  _ glows, _ now that Gon is looking at it, reflecting something so distant it warps the texture of the snow around him.

He grits his teeth and forces himself to stand. And Gon looks up.

From between the mountain peaks, hidden behind a swarm of diamond-encrusted birds and a flurry of unfalling snow, there is a glimmer of starlight reflecting off a house made of black ice. It floats between the clouds and mountain peaks, just far enough away that Gon would have never noticed it if he hadn’t seen the discolored light. 

A relieved laugh bubbles out of Gon’s throat, warmer than the thread at his wrist. He has no idea how he’ll get there, or how he’ll get Killua out. But it’s Killua. Gon would bet every one of his dreams that Killua’s there. 

Before he can do more than take a step, the rock shudders, and black ink wraps itself around Gon’s ankles, trapping him in place.

“I’m afraid you can’t get to Kil, not from here,” Killua’s brother says, tone mild but black eyes full of malice. He’s forgone any semblance of Killua’s appearance, taking on the appearance of a tall man with long black hair and high cheekbones, his tunic a green so dark it’s almost black. Unlike Killua, he doesn’t wear gloves. Instead, his pale hands are covered with pins and needles, little yellow bobs attached at the end of each one. The dreamwalker carefully selects a few, spinning it across his long fingers. It gleams with the memories he’d torn out of Gon, spun with thin strands of fading golden light.

“You can’t stop me!” Gon snarls.

“I hardly need to. You will never open the right lock, not on Kil’s dreams. The only key is Kil’s own memories, ones he knows he doesn’t need. Then he’ll be back to normal.”

Gon squirms even harder. “I’ll keep trying!”

“You are persistent,” Illumi says, threading more of Gon’s memories through his needles. A few of them give an audible snap as they are pulled too tight, and their light vanishes into black ash. “I need to stop you, or Father might let Kil go before all his memories are sealed, and I’ll have to clean up the mess once more. It will be like Alluka all over again.”

_ Alluka—? _ When he finds Killua, he’ll ask about Alluka. But Gon can’t help his best friend yet. He tries to shake what’s left of his memory thread out to loosen his bindings while Killua’s brother stays lost in thought. All he gets is a flash of warmth, before the golden light sputters.

Killua’s brother suddenly slams a fist into his open palm, a mockery of inspiration on his emotionless face. “I know! I’ll turn you into memories.”

Black thread oozes out of the snow and up Gon’s legs, and he can make out glimmers of gold from beneath the darkness. It doesn’t hurt like the memory removal had. In fact, it doesn’t feel like anything at all, like he’s forgotten how to feel. “What—”

“It’s quite simple, dreamwalker. We need dreams to dreamwalk. Kil uses memories that are of no use anymore. I help with that, of course.” Illumi smiles, but it doesn’t change his blank, probing stare, pinning Gon to the stone as effectively as the black ink looping up his legs and around his waist. “You will make a superb source for Kil’s dreamwalking, now that he’s lost what was left of Alluka. You should be proud, dreamwalker. Kil won’t remember you, but you’ve made enough of an impression that you’ll remain useful at least until Kil rebinds his memories properly.”

“You can’t make Killua forget his own dreams!” Gon says, and desperately tries to will up another thread of memory. But all he gets is a faint glimmer that vanishes into the snow.

Illumi sighs. “You know it’s useless. Why bother?”

“He’s my friend,” Gon says.

“Kil has no friends.”

Gon’s fist clenches, warmth pulsing warningly up his arm from the thread on his wrist even as the black ink curls up his throat. “He has me.”

The threads in the dreamwalker’s hands disintegrate, fluttering away in the snow. “No. He doesn’t. And he’ll forget you soon enough.”

“I  _ won’t—” _ Gon starts to say, as Illumi’s hand reaches for him, needles unnaturally dark.

But before they reach him, tiny white hands reach up through the bindings of ink and  _ yank, _ dropping Gon out of Illumi’s restraints and down, down through the ground. The last Gon knows of the snowy dreamscape is a quiet curse, and then cold, and then

Everything is black.

It feels like a dream, but he’s drowning in night, in the darkness of a moonless sky. All around Gon it’s quiet, wrapping around him in thick reams of wool, like a hug from the sky on a hot summer’s night. The numbness that Illumi’s brother had wrapped him in is gone, and Gon can feel every ache and soreness floating around him and through him, seeping out into the void. He’s falling, he knows, but there’s no wind to tell, no sign of up or down or ground or sky.

And the  _ eyes. _ Empty black eyes, somehow darker than the void, staring at him unblinking with a childlike curiosity, and Gon can hear his own voice whispering words over and over again, a word that sounds like  _ Killua— _

His back thuds against the wooden pier of his own dreamscape, knocking his breath out of his lungs. The breeze is warm and familiar, almost comforting as he tries to catch his breath.

At least he’s not falling anymore. Gon has done enough falling recently.

“Hey, Gon,” Killua’s voice says, and Gon starts so badly he falls off the pier.

The shock of hitting the ocean nearly wakes him up, enough that he can hear Leorio talking to Palm, voices echoing through bubbles around his head.  _ Mito is strong. She will be fine, _ Palm says.

_ It’s been days, and those weird runes are still burnt into her skin. And Gon won’t even wake up— _

_ She will be fine, _ Palm says again, anger dripping from her words.  _ I will speak with her. And Mito loves Gon. _

_ Love doesn’t heal burns. Void,  _ **I** _ can’t heal burns I can’t see. Dreamwalking injuries don’t make sense! _

Palm growls, and Gon can practically see her gemstone glinting.  _ Then try harder, doctor. _

_ What do you think I’m doing? _ Leorio groans, and Gon feels a numbness unravel along his arm.  _ Come on, Gon. _

A cold hand touches Gon’s shoulder, and he kicks back up to the surface, leaving Palm and Leorio behind. There’s no sign of his friend, no familiar white curls or grinning blue eyes, or even the whisper of power that follows Killua everywhere. Just a cloudy gray sky, wispy clouds drifting overhead like silver thread.

“Shit,” Gon says, and chokes back tears.

A girl’s head pokes out from over the pier, skin chalk-white and straight black hair chopped into rough layers and secured with odd yellow beads. But rather than eyes or a mouth, empty black holes stare out from her face, somehow expressing a cheerful smile. They’re the same eyes that had surrounded him before, full of childlike curiosity even behind their blankness. She reaches out for Gon, her arm still dripping with water. “Does it always have to be oceans?” Killua’s voice says out of that empty mouth, full of fond exasperation.

Gon’s heart restricts painfully in his chest. “Where’s Killua?” he asks.

The girl’s smile wobbles. “Not here,” Killua says again. Her expression screws up, obviously thinking hard. When she speaks again, she says in Gon’s voice, “Visit me?”

Gon pulls himself up to the pier, willing a warm wind to dry himself off. The girl giggles, the breeze making the beads in her hair clack together. She’s wearing a strange pink and green dress, sleeves tight and skirts dragging almost to her brown leather boots. But every piece of fabric is covered in runes in the same jagged loops as Killua’s embroidered gloves. On closer inspection, the yellow beads look to be made of those same runes—Gon tries to focus on them, but his eyes slide off before he can figure out what’s written. It gives him a headache.

He shakes his head, and focuses on her eyes. “You saved me,” he says.

She nods soberly, far too serious for how young she appears.  “I was hiding,” she says with Killua’s voice. “My brother made sure it never gets out.”

“You—” Gon jumps to his feet, pulse racing. “You know where he is! Can you take me? Please, I need to see him, if he’s okay…”

The girl shakes her head, not meeting Gon’s insistent stare. “I can’t,” she says with Killua’s voice.

All the air goes out of Gon’s lungs, and a larger-than-usual wave splashes over the pier. “Then why did you save me,” he says.

The little girl shrinks under his stare, but she doesn’t back down. Instead, she points at herself, gesturing at her skirts and the beads. They flicker with unseen power, like the runes aren’t woven into the material but make it up. Even her chalky skin seems to move, and Gon can make out nearly-invisible lines scribbling around her cheekbones and empty black eyes. “I’m the rune,” he hears himself say. “Brought me here,” Killua’s voice adds.

Gon tilts his head to the side, still trying to focus on the runes in her beads. “You’re…made of dreams? Memories? Is that why you’re using Killua’s voice?” Killua’s voice, and his own, like echoes from a clear well. Gon wonders if the girl realizes she’s using his memories, or if she can only speak through whoever’s dream she’s in. “Are you Killua’s dreams?”

The girl shakes her head, little hands spread wide. A few of her beads spread between her fingers in the shape of gloves, her own face sketched in the air. “Gave up my dreams,” she says in Killua’s voice, and the face morphs into familiar runes that settle against the cloth. But then the glove shifts into his flame pendant, which shatters into shards. A few of those shards turn into hands and snowflakes that loop around and down, as though tugging on a doll. She frowns, eyes wobbling although no tears fall, and the images fade into the gray sky. “Forgot. Like nothing.”

“You’re not like nothing!” Gon says, and she gives him a wide-eyed look of shock identical to Killua’s. It hurts to see, like no one’s ever told them that they are a person. So Gon adds, “You’re someone. Someone important. Killua wouldn’t forget someone for no reason.”

“What if I’m not?” she asks, and Gon can’t ignore how hollow Killua’s voice sounds, or how anguished the girl looks as she echoes his words.

He tries to smile. “You are,” he says. “You saved me! If Killua didn’t care about you, he would have used you up a long time ago, not hidden you even when he didn’t remember. He wants to remember you, I know it.”

She smiles a little, obviously pleased in simple childlike innocence, and points to Gon. “Gon,” she says with Killua’s voice, layers of exasperation and amusement and wonder laid over each other with the countless times Killua has said his name. It hurts, even more now that Killua isn’t there. Gon takes a sharp breath, and the girl points to herself. “Nanika,” a strange girl’s voice whispers out of her mouth.

“Thank you for saving me, Nanika,” Gon says.

A handshake seems a little impersonal for someone who speaks with his own voice, who saved him from being turned into nothing but forgotten dreams. Gon bows a little, like the Imperial Corsairs that pass through Aunt Mito’s bar during the winters, and her smile grows wide and genuine. It’s an odd expression, in a face with no features, but Gon’s seen enough strange and terrible things in his dreams that he doesn’t mind a cheerful girl with voids in her face. She reminds him of Killua, when his guard is down and he doesn’t care that Gon can see him laugh.

She giggles, and wraps her arms around him for a brief hug.

“Do you think you can bring me back to Killua’s dreams?” Gon asks.

She frowns, plopping back onto the pier like the child she appears to be. “I can’t,” she uses Killua’s words again, and points to herself. Runes flicker in the air, then explode into shards. “Memories. Need to leave. I can’t.”

“I can’t find him, Nanika. You have to do  _ something.” _ But Gon doesn’t know what, and it claws at him until his whole chest feels like an open wound, salt water dripping against the gashes. He hates this, hates feeling incapable and motionless and useless. With Killua, it had felt like he could do anything, go anywhere, learn something new. Even when he was awake, it was a comfort knowing that there was always something new on the horizon. And now he’s stuck, and Killua’s gone, with only his memories left behind.

The memory girl doesn’t make a sound, but she gently covers one of Gon’s hands with hers. She’s so small, enough that Gon wonders if she’d be blown away in a gust of wind. And she looks as broken as Gon feels, able to save Gon from Illumi and know where Killua is without being able to do much more than that.

Gon has to do something.

“But you brought me back here, so you must be able to do something.” He grabs onto one of the runes as best he can, the light skittering across his skin. “We need to get to Killua, find the right memories. There has to be a way in.”

Aunt Mito broke through the other dream. She knows how to dreamwalk—and she was able to break into Ging’s dreams. Even if she doesn’t want to tell Gon, she’ll have to. Because if she doesn’t, Gon will try again, and again. 

“Nanika,” he asks. “Can you help me make a key?”

“What will you give up,” Killua’s voice asks, and Nanika’s empty black eyes seem to swallow all of the light around her.

Gon doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t need to. The answer is painfully obvious. “Anything. He’s my friend.”

Nanika presses one of her beads into Gon’s hand. “Wake up, Gon.”

* * *

Aunt Mito is in her room with Palm, and she looks as exhausted as Gon can ever remember. Her brown skin is worn thin beneath her freckles, and as Palm runs a hairbrush through her hair, she leans into the other woman as though feeding off her warmth. Palm murmurs something that sounds harsh and biting, but it makes Mito grin, a shadow of her normal smile with none of its mischief. Downstairs, the tavern is quieter than usual for the early evening, but Leorio and Knuckle’s voices argue up the stairs, words indecipherable over the other sounds.

The floor creaks under Gon’s bare feet, and Mito has to grab onto Palm before she whips around to the noise. “You have awoken,” Palm says, mouth thin with worry.

Gon tries a cheerful smile. “Thank you for helping my arm, Aunt Mito. It doesn’t hurt as much now.”

Palm’s mouth thins even further, and she takes a threatening step towards Gon, brush held in her fist like a butcher’s knife. He can’t help but take a step back, his good hand held up in defense. “It has been three days. I—Your mother—We  _ all _ have been worried. You have almost  _ died _ and all you can—”

“Palm,” Aunt Mito says, and her lover halts mid-word, a stubborn look in her dark eyes. But Mito doesn’t back down. “Can you go check on the tavern and make sure Knuckle hasn’t burned down the kitchen?”

“Your son is going to do something stupid,” Palm says. When Gon doesn’t protest, she slams the brush down on the nearest shelf, which wobbles precariously.

“Gon’s old enough to make stupid decisions on his own,” Mito says, and gives her son a look.

Palm’s mouth thins even further. “This does not make me feel better,” she says.

Aunt Mito laughs, a strangely brittle noise, as she tugs the veil over Palm’s black hair. A little embroidered rune gleams from the veil’s folds as it slides the fabric into place, mirroring the faint markings embedded in the gemstone on her forehead. “You trust me, right?”

“Of course I do, love,” Palm says, and raises a hand to the green gemstone. The light drifts, first through Palm’s veil and then to Aunt Mito’s fingertips. She kisses the inside of Aunt Mito’s wrist, then her lips, leaving Gon’s mom with a genuine smile. As she back away, she pauses, and Gon worries she’s going to say something to him. All he gets is a hand gripping his shoulder too tightly, sharp fingernails digging into his skin in warning. But she leaves nonetheless, yelling down the stairs at something Knuckle and Shoot have done to the tables before the door to the living quarters slams shut.

Aunt Mito raises an eyebrow, green eyes steady. “Are you going to make a stupid decision?” she asks Gon.

He starts shaking his head, then reconsiders. “I need to unlock my friend’s dreams,” he says.

“What memories are you going to give up?”

The bead throbs in his hand, and Gon tightens his grip on it. “Whatever I need to.”

She looks him over, spiky coarse hair to immobilized arm to bare feet, and sighs. “Stupid is a Freecss tradition, I guess,” she says, and motions for him to sit next to her. She takes out a spool of undyed thread, winding it gently around her fingers in a net. There are marks burned into a pattern across her knuckles, written in the same runes Gon had seen her use earlier, marks that have begun to scab. “The easiest way to walk between dreams is to have a direct connection, by touch or shared object,” she says. “Runes also work, but you need the right memory and the right rune. After that, it’s memories of the person you want to connect to. From how long you dreamt after I woke up, I’m sure you know this already.”

“But—” This isn’t the response Gon expects.

Instead of letting him continue, Aunt Mito untangles enough from her fingers to loop a strand of thread around his wrist, knotting it a little too tightly against his pulse on his bad arm. “If your friend dreamwalks without using dreams, he likely opened his portals by a mix of brute force and worldbinding, maybe something owned by the other person. It’s not unlike picking a lock.”

Gon frowns. “I don’t know the right rune.”

Aunt Mito shakes her head in agreement and loops part of the thread in a loose knot. It looks almost like a portal, or a door, a picture instead of a rune. She says, “It takes years of practice to get the right one, and much more study than you have time for right now. We Freecsses have always been better at breaking through things headfirst, anyways. You need something powerful for that—a memory on its own won’t be enough. You want something linking your memories together, either a sequence in a loop or as many threads as you can bind together. The repetition or the strength of the memory will be enough to establish the link between dreams.”

“Like your nightmares,” Gon says. His arm tingles with nonexistent burns beneath Leorio’s bandages.

She nods. “The hard part isn’t getting finding the block. It’s having enough power to break through, without losing the ability to get back. For that, you either need years of practice, or a worldbinding capable of holding it all together.”

It’s possible she wants him to offer a rune of his own, or ask for her threads. Instead, he holds out the bead Nanika gave him. A collection of runes in Killua’s handwriting gleam up out of the glass. “Will this work?”

Aunt Mito flashes him a quick grin, and winds it into the thread. “Did you pull this out of your dream?”

He nods. “I had it when I woke up.”

She looks a little exasperated, but no more than she usually does. “We’re dreamweavers, Gon. We control our dreams. The more you change a dream, or the more dreams you wind together, the more powerful the spell is. It doesn’t make it a different dream, exactly, but it gives you something firm to hold onto even if everything else goes wrong. This—” she nudges the colorless thread on his wrist, and the bead sparks with green light “—will open whatever you need it to, even without the right rune. All you need is as many memories of your friend as you can hold. But remember, you’ll never get them back. It’s important that you give up what’s necessary, but it’s just as important that you don’t give up so much you forget everything else.”

Gon can’t help but stare in surprise. “Why are you helping me, Aunt Mito?” he asks.

She smirks at him, and unlaces the threads from her fingers. As she does, the rest of the thread flashes green, and her expression twitches as the memory she’s using to power the spell disappears into the thread. “If I didn’t, you’d still try to find him by yourself, and I have a feeling you already tried,” she says ruefully. 

“I lost…” Gon can’t remember what he lost, memories of Killua replaced with blank black eyes and piercing ink nails. It hurts. “I couldn’t help him,” he says.

Aunt Mito places her free hand on his shoulder, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I can’t come with you, wherever you’re going. It would take more memories than either of us has to lose right now, even with that bead on your wrist. So this is the best I can do.”

“I can do this by myself,” Gon says. He can, now that he knows what to do. It’s selfish, but he’s asked so much of other people, he can’t ask for more. And yet—

“And I want to help.” She glances at the door, and Gon half-expects Palm to storm back up the stairs, or Leorio to barge in. But nothing happens, except for Aunt Mito releasing her grip on his wrist. “I made a mistake. I made a  _ lot _ of mistakes as your mother, hiding our nightmares and not letting you remember how to dreamwalk. I thought there would be time, later. That maybe we could talk after you’d grown up, that I could teach you better. By then, you’d be old enough to know which memories would be useful, and which would make you lose yourself, and you could make your own choices. But I never found the right time.”

Gon doesn’t know what he can say. He’s still angry. It’s not fair that she didn’t tell him, didn’t let him remember. He could have made the choice to leave on his own, or chosen to dreamwalk, to look for new places or new dreams.

Before he can respond, Aunt Mito keeps talking. “I’m sorry, Gon,” she says. “You don’t have to forgive me. Damn me in deep waters, I was wrong. I would still protect you, but not the same way, and I wouldn’t hold it from you for so long. I gave you everything else I could, and I still made mistakes, but you’re safe. You’re alive. And…Gon, you tried to fly, so many times, and it looks like you can soar on your own. I’m proud of you. I love you. And I’m sorry.”

It’s not okay that the choice was taken from him. It won’t ever be.

But he’s here because of what Aunt Mito taught him, too. Because she loves him. And she’s not stopping him anymore.

Gon hugs her anyways. It’s a little uncomfortable with his injured arm pressed between their bodies. His head still fits right against her shoulder, even if he’s taller than her now, and she smells of curried fish and fire and oceans.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says.

She leans his forehead against his, like she used to when he was a child. “I know you’re going to do something stupid, but you’re still my son. I almost lost you twice to dreams. I’m not letting that happen again, not without giving you what help I can.”

Gon closes his hand over his wrist, feeling the magic already humming calm and familiar through the thread. “What if I don’t come back?” he says.

“Do you think what you’re doing is important?”

“Yes,” Gon says without hesitating.

She takes a deep breath before responding. “Then if you don’t come back, I have to accept that. As long as you’re doing what you think is necessary, and we both do everything we can to keep you safe,” she says. “Now, make sure you tie your memories into that thread before I have to reset the spell and spend another memory of you forgetting to make breakfast because you spent too much time chatting up the fishmongers.”

Gon laughs, bubbling out of his chest and under his skin. It feels good to laugh, even better when it makes Aunt Mito smile. But she presses his hand to his wrist nonetheless, waiting impatiently for him to complete the spell. So he closes his eyes, and pictures the clearest memory he has of home, an ordinary day where the sun is shining and the wind blows up from the port. Aunt Mito, with her strong hands and frustrated smile, with a kitchen full of fish stew and spilled wine and potions made of oceans and fire. Palm, and Leorio, and Knuckle, and Shoot, bickering over chores or the baskets of bread or who opened the last bottle of port from the South Seas. And running up from the piers in Masadora, where ships overflow with goods to sell and the colorful buildings rise just beyond the port, brine and fried dough and rotting wood and refuse colliding in a terrible, mindbending stench that smells like  _ home _ as much as Whale Island ever did.

“Again,” Aunt Mito says. Her voice sounds distant despite being in arm’s reach. “This time, for your friend.”

It’s harder than Gon expects, to focus on collecting individual memories of Killua. Which makes sense—little memories of daily life, odd jobs and morning meals, they all blur, but variations on food or time make them easy to pull apart into distinct moments, to turn what happened into magic without forgetting when the moment is supposed to end. When all of the moments are woven together into a tapestry, choosing even a single thread to untangle is an impossible task. It’s impossible to have only one memory of a person you love.

Oh.

Gon loves him.

It makes sense. Because when Gon thinks of his best friend, he doesn’t only remember things that happened. They feel…less important, somehow, than the ways that Killua had acted, what he’d said or done. Like how surprised Killua could look when he laughed, like he’d never laughed unrestrained before. How tightly he would hold onto Gon while they wandered through someone else’s dreams, ready and willing to go along with Gon’s strangest and silliest whims. But mostly, Gon remembers how his best friend’s eyes gleam the color of the burning blue sky when given a challenge, whether it was ripping holes in reality or competing to eat the most desserts, and how his smile makes even the dullest, murkiest dreams seem bright and vivid and alive.

_ I like being with you, _ the Killua in his memories says, almost loud enough to touch, and Gon wishes the real Killua were there with him.

Gon doesn’t realize the spell’s finished until he feels his mom’s thumb brush away a tear from his cheek. She looks at him like she’s seeing him for the first time. On his wrist, the thread gleams with gold, tied off with little knots of green. “You’ll always have a home here, Gon, no matter where you go. All I ask is that you promise you’ll be careful.”

“As careful as you,” he says, and links their pinkies together. “I promise.”

Aunt Mito smiles. “Then I know you’ll be fine.”

* * *

 

Nanika is on the pier when Gon returns to his dreamscape, kicking her booted feet against the ocean. She’s replaced the dress she had been wearing with Masadoran-style clothes, layers of oversized pink and green overrobes covering a tunic that hangs to her knees and tied with a white sash. It looks a bit like Palm’s clothing, if lacking her veil. But instead of the embroidered patterns Palm favors, Nanika’s robes are covered in semi-translucent runes, which skitter back and forth like a living thing. She looks even smaller than she’d been when Gon woke up, barely coming to Gon’s waist. But she smiles widely at him, pointing at his wrist.

“That could work!” Killua’s voice says. “Someone else’s dreams?”

Gon shakes his head. “Aunt Mito helped make this, but I’ll need to do the dreamwalk myself.”

Her smile falls upside down, and Gon has a feeling that she would be glaring at him if she had eyes. “Forget?” she asks with his own voice.

“That’s part of dream magic,” he says. “Killua gave up a lot more than I am.”

She visibly sighs, even if she doesn’t make a sound. “I’m the rune,” she says in Gon’s voice, so quiet that the words are almost carried away on the breeze. Several strands of her black hair turn a glimmering silver, and her paper-white skin shifts to the texture of soft gray fabric.

“No!” Gon grabs onto her arms before she can transform any further. She freezes, blank black eyes widening to the size of saucers and skin turning white again. “No, Nanika. I’m not using you. That’s not fair.”

She flaps her sleeves to try to make Gon let go, the overrobes draping over her fingers as though made for someone quite a bit taller. “Memories!” she says insistently.

“You’re not my memories,” Gon says. “I don’t know how to make magic with other people’s dreams. Even if I could, I wouldn’t use you. Killua would be sad if he didn’t see you again.”

“Killua would be sad if he didn’t see you again,” she parrots right back.

Which is why Gon’s doing this in the first place. He has to make sure Killua’s okay. And if he has to give this all up…

It’s worth it. Gon can always dream again, can find memories in new places. He’s free. Killua deserves that, too.

“He’ll see both of us, right now,” Gon says. “I promise, Nanika.”

The memories he has left of Killua spin together, little moments and big ones unspooling until they collect in his palm, golden threads as strong and soft as silk. Before they snip off, he ties one end onto the thread Aunt Mito had knotted around his wrist, doing his best to mimic the intricate web she’d created between her fingers with the rest. The memories seem more distant now, like echoes of things he once remembered.

Gon wonders what will happen, when he uses the memories up. If losing his memories will also mean losing his feelings. If he’ll ever dream of Killua again. But it’s less important than making sure Killua’s okay, that he’s not trapped or lost forever. As long as he is okay, Gon can bear anything.

“We follow the thread?” Nanika asks with his voice, tiny hands plucking a single thread out of his hands and tangling it between her fingers, the gold fading away. The memory disappears, and Gon wonders which one it was. He doesn’t spend too long worrying, though, because Nanika grabs onto Gon’s, looking up at him with hopeful black eyes.

Gon grins, a thrill of excitement growing that always precedes the times Killua took him somewhere new. Only this time, he’s doing it himself. “We find Killua,” he says, and loops the thread in front of him. No rune, no words. But it feels like the right thing to do.

The air glows with a warm golden light, and Gon leads Nanika through the hole in his dreams.

They return to the snowy landscape, mountains hanging upside down in the twilight and the white snow shimmering with starlight. But this time, Gon’s portal drops them in the middle of the air, falling towards the house made of black ice. Nanika tugs eagerly on his hand, her skirts fluttering around her as they drop through a cloud of motionless glass birds. A few of them shatter with bell-like rings, but most scatter, swooping far away on the updraft.

They land soundlessly against the side of the house, ice chilly but not freezing against Gon’s bare feet. The window is too murky for Gon to make out much more than a warm light inside, and the form of someone sitting motionless. He reaches out to rap on the window, but Nanika pulls his hand back. 

“Looking for a key?” she says with Killua’s voice, and scowls.

Gon grins apologetically. “You’re right, Nanika. I’m sorry.” 

She nods decisively, and begins to pull him towards the other side of the house. 

“Key,” she says again, and wriggles her sleeves at the door.

Gon bends down and presses the bead against the keyhole, willing his memories through. 

The door gives a little click. Rather than open, though, the wall itself turns translucent, and Gon and Nanika drift through the black ice.

Inside, the house is a single warmly lit room, with candles on bookshelves and strange black mirrors that don’t reflect anything adorning most of the walls. A box of keys in a collection of materials and sizes is scattered across the side of the floor as though thrown with great force. Killua sits in the middle of a pile of pillows, blank book open on his lap and head turned towards the window. His clothes are softer than Gon can ever remember seeing, high collar and long sleeves made of a thick uncolored wool and trousers a deep blue the color of twilight. His white hair is somehow even messier than it normally is, as though it had been slept on recently and Killua hadn’t bothered to untangle the curls. And his hands are bare, jagged black scars like broken runes leaking down his pale skin and vanishing up his sleeves.

“Go away, Illumi,” Killua murmurs, neck too stiff for how placid he sounds. It’s like he’s fighting to not look at Gon, to stare out the window of his dreams and watch the landscape pass far below.

Gon swallows heavily. “Killua,” he starts to say, but the name catches in his throat and sticks, holding back everything else.

The ground drops out from under him, and he nearly plummets to—well, not his death, maybe, but a really long way down, back to where Illumi will certainly notice him. He only barely manages to grab onto the smooth sides of the hole, digging in with his fingertips and lashing himself to the floor itself with as many memory threads as he can manage. A cold wind howls beneath his bare feet, making his toes tingle with frost.

Killua’s head appears over him, expression blank. “Sneaking into your own jail is low, Illumi. Even for you.”

One of the thicker memories snaps, golden thread dissipating into the cold air before Gon can figure out which one it was. The floor is slick and cold, and Gon’s not sure if Killua’s deliberately making it worse or simply waiting for him to give up. That only makes him hold on tighter.

The blankness cracks a little, and Killua’s sharp eyes narrow with fury. “I don’t care what you do to me—keep me awake for another day or another week so you can poke around in my head. Keep me locked in my own head until my body gives out. It doesn’t matter. I’m not forgetting Alluka, or Gon, or anyone else, not even to escape from this empty sky. So fuck off until you and Father want to wake me up.”

Harsh, biting wind whips out from the world below, ripping Gon up from the ledge and into the air until he’s eye-level with Killua. The wind swirls around him, tugging at his clothes and his face until his skin burns with cold. “I’m not Illumi, Killua!” Gon says, and reaches out through the gale. A strand of gold loops in odd patterns, tugging at Killua’s fingers before wrapping around them and up his arm, making little flickers of silver echo out of the soft fabric.

Killua doesn’t even seem to notice. “This isn’t another test!” Killua snaps, the winds carrying his screams right through Gon. “You can’t lock me away, then walk into my dreams wrapped in my memories of my only friend and be surprised when I throw you out again. You trained me better than that. _ ” _

“But Killua—”

“I’m  _ done, _ Illumi!” Killua says, and the gale tightens until Gon can’t even breathe.

“Brother!” a girl’s voice shouts, and the frozen winds vanish. Gon lands painfully on the smooth floor, injured arm smacking down elbow-first and sending a shockwave of pain through his shoulder. A few more threads fall of with the force, bright gold light dimming and vanishing into plain thread.

Nanika tiptoes over to pick them up, looping them into an odd pattern with small nimble fingers. She looks different, less child-like, the Masadoran robes curling behind her like wings.

Killua stares at her, his pale cheeks ruddy and tear-streaked. “Nanika?” he whispers. “I woke up. I remember Alluka now. Why are you here?”

“Memories,” she says, and pushes the thread into Killua’s hands. The braid flashes silver as it touches Killua’s skin, and then it melts into seawater. She points back towards Gon, a wide smile on her paper-white face. Killua follows her finger, eyes widening even more as she says with his voice, “Gon.”

“Gon,” he whispers.

Gon manages to flop his hand in a wave, too exhausted to do anything else. “Hi, Killua,” he says.

That’s all he’s able to get out before his best friend—his  _ real _ friend, the real Killua he’s been looking for—tackles him with a hug, arms tight around his neck and face buried in his shoulder. Gon curls around him, soaking up the familiar strength of his best friend and not willing to let go.

This is Killua. He’s  _ real. _ He’s not gone.

“Frozen hells, I thought I’d never seen you again,” Killua murmurs, words vibrating across Gon’s skin. “And I tried to… I’m so sorry, Illumi trapped me, and when I saw you I thought you were--”

“It’s okay.” Gon tangles his good hand into Killua’s hair, marveling at how soft his curls are. He wonders if he’d ever done this before, knots and curls catching between his fingers like richly spun silk, or if the memories are caught in the golden threads scattered and fading across the floor.

It’s not nearly long enough before Killua pulls back, searching Gon’s face for something. “Why are you here?” he asks.

“I wanted to see you,” Gon says.

Killua’s cheeks turn pink and he starts to laugh, but cuts himself off. “No, starblind. How did you get here? Not even Nanika could get through my brother’s locks, no matter how long we tried.”

“Nanika helped! And Aunt Mito, she knows about dreamwalking. So we made a key. See?” He holds out the thread on his wrist, Nanika’s bead gleaming with gold and green light.

Killua eyes it, gently tracing the bead with a finger. “How many memories are in this?” he asks.

Gon doesn’t say anything, but Killua can read him as easily as he reads runes. His eyes flash with anger and worry, and he draws his hand back as though set on fire. “Gon. How many memories did you give up to get here?”

“As many as I could,” Gon says. He carefully unknots the strong in his wrist, holding onto the threads tight enough that the bead digs into his palm. The golden memories pulse in warning, and Gon ignores them. 

He holds his clenched fist out to Killua. “Take them. Please.”

Killua gapes, open-mouthed and confused. “Gon, I can’t—those are your memories, you won’t—”

“It’s okay,” Gon says.

“No! It’s not!” Killua’s fists clench, nails digging into his palms. “You can’t just give up yourself. Not for me.”

“Your brother said only your memories can unlock this door, and these are my memories of you. They should work instead.”

“You’ll  _ forget me, _ Gon!”

“I already will!” Gon says, and Killua rocks back as though slapped. “I lost…Killua, your brother took most of my memories of you. They’re gone. What’s left, even if I don’t give them to you now, I don’t think I can come back again. This is all I have left.”

And if Killua leaves, he’ll forget everything about Nanika, about Gon, about being free. Gon refuses to let that happen.

“No,” Killua says. “I’ll wake up, and I’ll...I don’t know what to do. But even if I get out of my dreams, I can’t leave home. I won’t be able to see you again no matter what we do. You can’t do this!”

“If I don’t, you’ll forget me,” Gon says, and grabs onto Killua’s hands. They’re warm and familiar, and they fit imperfectly in Gon’s. “I know you’ll get free, Killua. You always figure something out. I want to help you.”

Before either of them can say anything else, he reties the remaining threads of his memories around Killua’s wrist, latching them with Nanika’s bead. They glimmer over the black scars with warm golden light. Outside, the mountains begin to sink, dropping through the flocks of diamond birds and into the snowy landscape until everything drifts away, fracturing and empty.

Killua stares at the threads, before slowly raising his eyes back to Gon’s. “I don’t want you to forget,” he says, and his voice is very small.

Gon studies Killua’s clear blue eyes for a moment, before reaching up to press a gentle kiss to his best friend’s lips. It feels like a goodbye. “Maybe you need to find me and remind me what I forget.”

“You—” The world fades at the edges, until the only things of prominence are the golden memories tied around Killua’s pale wrist and searing blue eyes blazing out of his face. “You starblessed  _ asshole, _ Gon. You found me this time, but next time, it’s my turn. I’m coming after you and your stupid oceans. My family can try to stop me.”

Gon grins with all the confidence he has in his best friend, and holds on as tight as he can. “You’d better,” he says. “And you’d better not forget me.”

Killua’s laughter echoes as though woven into linen and wrapped around Gon’s ears. “Never,” he promises. Even his fingers, still threaded in Gon’s, seem to fade away, although the warmth of his skin lingers in the spaces. “I’ll find you. And…”

It’s hard to tell if he drifts off, or if his words are lost. But Gon knows Killua, knows his best friend better than himself. So he presses. “What do you want, Killua?”

“What we want, it’s impossible, I know it is.” His eyes close, and it’s almost impossible to distinguish his hair and his skin and the shimmer of nothingness.

“I made it here, right?” Gon says. “Nothing’s impossible.”

Killua leans his forehead against Gon’s, barely the lightest pressure of softest curls left now. “I believe you,” he says, tears in his voice that Gon can’t see. “But Gon, I want…If you can, don’t forget me, okay? Don’t—”

 

* * *

 

*****************

 

* * *

 

The ceiling is too close. Although that could be because the beams swim and dance across Gon’s vision, everything blisteringly bright and deliriously painful. He closes his eyes again immediately. Why does it  _ hurt. _

Someone calls his name, and a heavy hand presses against his forehead. “Hey buddy,” a familiar voice says. “Welcome back.”

Gon risks squinting, and finds a welcome shadow dimming the lights. “Leorio!” he says, and struggles to sit up. Even his voice hurts, cracking like sandpaper in his throat.

“Hey, don’t move yet.” The hand on his forehead moves to his shoulder, trying to keep him in place. But Gon stays upright, even as the muscles in his back scream. “Lie down for a minute, Palm’s grabbing something to help with the headache.”

“But I’m fine—”

Leorio presses a cup of water into his hands, tipping it up to his mouth so Gon can sip carefully. “You’ve been asleep for a week. Even if you were doing dream magic the whole time, your body needs to function.”

As if responding to Leorio’s words, Gon’s stomach growls violently, and the doctor snorts. “I was able to get some bread and water into you over the week, but you were comatose. Your mom didn’t want you waking up, so we did what we could. Can you hold the cup one-handed? I need to check your arm.”

It takes a bit of jostling, but Leorio carefully unbandages Gon’s right arm. Gon remembers burning, feeling his skin peeling away in a blaze. But all that’s left are strange thin scars, scattered from his shoulder to his wrist in countless threads. A few of them look like runes, most of them in the Whale Island script. Gon can make out the runes for  _ contact _ and  _ home, _ and a whole line of connecting runes for  _ friend _ over and over again, scribbled across his arm in fire. They don’t hurt too much, not like his arm had when it had been on fire.

But it  _ hadn’t _ been on fire. So why does Gon remember that it was?

It takes a little longer than Gon likes to finish drinking the water, but his throat feels better when he’s done. His head keeps pounding, a hammer thumping against his temples. “My head hurts,” he admits.

“You’re dehydrated. Sleeping for a week will do that,” Leorio says not unkindly.

As if on cue, the door opens, and Palm storms into the room in her usual fury. “You made us late,” she snarls at Leorio. Gon winces and wishes he could close his ears like he closes his eyes.

Leorio grimaces and pushes his glasses up his nose. “You can’t use cloth with runes on it, I told you before.”

“They are spelled for pain relief, runes  _ you _ drew up for us.”

“For emergencies! More medicinal runes now aren’t going to help.”

Aunt Mito pushes past both of them and kneels next to Gon. He smiles at her, and she buries him in a hug. He wraps his arms around her just as tight, holding on like they're drowning.

“What do you remember?” Aunt Mito asks once Leorio and Palm have left.

Gon blinks. What does he have to remember, that he might have forgotten?

"I'm sorry," Gon says. "I remember your nightmares, and Kite, but I think... I don't know."

"You get used to it," she says. "The gaps don't leave, though. You'll always have them."

"Will you still teach me how to dreamwalk?" he asks.

She sighs, a frown on her face but a light in her eyes that has nothing to do with tears. "You'll lose memories," she says. "You'll lose parts of yourself. That's the risk."

Gon nods. "I know. But I think it's important."

There is a long pause, and Gon wonders if he got it wrong, that the memories he lost meant Aunt Mito would never help him again. But Aunt Mito leans her forehead against his, and it reminds Gon of something, of someone important. But he doesn't know what it was, only the ache now that it's gone.

"Then I'll teach you, everything I know," she says. "I promise."

 

* * *

 

A knock at the front door echoes through Gon’s dreams, pulling him back to the waking world before he’s really finished with the spell. The crystal bottle in his hands makes an angry fizzing noise and puffs sugar-sweet smoke into his face, and he glares at it for a moment. It’s not the dream’s fault he was distracted.

He’s distracted sometimes, in the way that marks dreams that have been given away or taken or lost. Most people who work with dreams have these moments, little bits of themselves they gave away too easily. Aunt Mito can’t remember the name of the tavern on Whale Island, and Gon can’t remember pockets of last year, where he knew someone important and had to give them away. But it doesn’t affect his search for Kite—Gon has a feeling that even thought Kite won’t know what’s missing, Gon will find it again along the way. Sometimes Leorio fusses over him unnecessarily, in a way that makes Gon feel twelve and not eighteen, not nearly an adult.

And Aunt Mito has been strangely supportive of his intentions to leave Masadora, even training him on dreamwalking using threads and memories. Gon had thought she’d be more resistant to him leaving.

It’s not like he’s never coming back. As much as Whale Island had been his home once, it’s now Aunt Mito’s tavern he dreams of most frequently, the ocean lapping at the ships in port and the seagulls screaming overhead. And in the distance, stormclouds full of lightning and laughter echoing from snowcapped mountains, dreams he can’t hold onto in the morning no matter how hard he tries.

“Gon!” Aunt Mito calls from the kitchen. “I know you’re not asleep. Get the door!”

“Okay!” he shouts back, and stops up the syrupy stench. It vanishes back into the crystal as though it had never existed. He scrawls the dream and its purpose on a small piece of paper and ties it to the neck, adding it to the small pile.

Whoever it is knocks at the door again, louder and more insistent. It sounds like Palm, if Palm’s being impatient. Or has the bill collectors at her back. Or wants Aunt Mito to look at the new rune weaves Knuckle and Shoot were complaining about yesterday, the ones with poor threading and inconsistent formation.

…maybe he’d be better off waiting for Aunt Mito answer the knocks.

_ “Gon!” _ Aunt Mito bellows.

“I got it!” he says, and bounds down the stairs and through the empty dining room, barely managing to step out of the way before clipping one of the heavy tables.

He opens the heavy wooden door just as a familiar-looking girl with long black hair raises her hand to knock again. Painted glass beads chime bell-like from her braids and around her wrist, and she grins brightly, blue eyes dancing. At her side is a boy Gon’s age with white hair and identical blue eyes shifts, his overrobe sitting uncomfortably over travel-stained blue shirt and oddly-cut trousers. His pale hands are bare, but dark scars stretch out of the overlong edges of the coat where he’s grabbed onto the girl’s fingers so tightly both of their knuckles are white with strain. Little strands of gold are wrapped around his wrist, tied with a bead that glimmers in the morning sunlight.

And he stares at Gon like he’d been walking unaware through a dream, unsure if Gon is real or just a reflection of someone else he’d once known.

“Told you this was the right place, Brother,” the girl says. Her accent is nothing like Gon has ever heard before, but it rings in the back of his head like an old song he’d forgotten.

The boy blinks, then smiles hesitantly. It makes the sharp angles of his face soften. “You’re always right, Alluka,” he says, and lets himself be pushed towards Gon. “So um. You don’t remember, but you never told me where to find you. We took an airship out of the Inland Empire’s capital, but neither of us thought to send a message, and we didn’t really know which port was the right one, so—”

Gon’s moving before the boy can finish his sentence, a hand on each pale cheek to pull him down so Gon can kiss him firmly. The boy melts against him, strong hands covering Gon’s and a smile growing on his lips that feels like lightning in a thunderstorm or the first fresh breeze after the rainy season. It feels like a dream, the sort of dream that is too made-up to make for good magic, but it’s so much more real than a memory can ever be.

They break apart to breathe, and Gon leans his forehead against the boy’s, relishing the brilliant smile that echoes in the blood thumping in his veins. The other boy’s name is missing, the reasons that Gon should know him lost. He doesn’t know why, with holes in his memories, but this feels good. It feels  _ right. _

“You don’t remember me,” the boy says, like he can’t decide if he wants to laugh or cry.

Gon understands. He feels the same way. “I don’t,” he says.

“But you kissed me.”

“I did,” Gon says, and grins.

The boy bursts with laughter, an infectious and bright sound that makes Gon’s heart jump in his chest. “You starblind asshole,” he says. “You can’t kiss strangers!”

“Then tell me your name,” Gon says.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because—” The boy laughs again, blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Because it’s  _ you, _ Gon.”

“His name is Killua,” the girl says, a wide grin on her face. “I’m Alluka. Thank you for saving us, Gon.”

“I don’t remember,” Gon says.

“But we do,” Killua says. “And we’ll make new memories.”

“Together?” Gon asks.

Killua smiles. “Yeah, starblind.”

And he lets Gon lead them into Aunt Mito’s tavern, hand tight in Gon’s like it’s been countless times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it took forever, but it's done! thank you to my artist [@toomanyhexcodes](http://toomanyhexcodes.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr, as well as to the mods of this year's big bang, and especially to my beta and to wuzzy for encouraging (and at times physically and mentally shoving) me over the finish line. and thank you to you, reader of this fic! I loved writing this thing, and I hope you enjoyed it as well.
> 
> come hit me up on [tumblr!](xyliane.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> This thing was born after spending far, far too much time reading about the Safavid Empire's mastery of cloth and also about trans-Himalayan wool trade in the 19th century. Turns out, research is full of rabbit holes, and sometimes plot bunnies come out to eat. And multiply. 
> 
> Hit me up on [tumblr](https://xyliane.tumblr.com) if you want to talk killugon, how great Mito is, Safavid robes, or how many trade wars were fought between Tibet and Kashmir over pashm.


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